Jakarta – The East Nusa Tenggara provincial government has set the minimum regional wage for 2012 at Rp 925,000 (about US$102) a month.

Assistant for Governance and Development, Yohana Lisapaly, said that the government had increased the wage by Rp 75,000 from this year's wage of Rp 850,000, tempo.co reported. She added that the increase was based on the government's survey and local conditions.

A worker, Luther, complained that the wage was only enough to buy food and was far from enough to cover other costs like education expenses for his children. He said the living cost in the city is at least Rp 2.5 million.