At noon last Thursday, hundreds of employees of Semen Padang descended on the Indarung branch of Bank Mandiri in Padang, to withdraw their savings in protest. "It's useless to keep our money here. Mandiri wants to destroy us," said Army Munir, chairman of the Semen Padang Workers association.

Army and his colleagues were protesting the bank's decision to postpone the disbursement of a Rp500 billion loan to Semen Padang because, the