Ridwan Max Sijabat, Jakarta – Most formal sector can expect bigger paychecks by early February, after the government approved a 9 percent minimum wage increase for workers in every province except Papua.

The director general of industrial relations and social security affairs at the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry, Myra M. Hanartani, said the wage increase would be effective for recent hires and some existing hires.

"The new minimum wage is effective only for the new recruits, workers who are single and those who have been employed less than a year," Myra said.

"However, it would be appreciated if employers also applied the wage increase for workers who have been employed for many years or apply the increase according to agreements between management and workers," she added.

According to Myra, employers should not set wage increases by themselves, suggesting that the decision be made transparently and in discussion with workers for the sake of democratic industrial relations in the country.

North Sulawesi's minimum wage will have the highest increase, 19.05 percent, to Rp 1,250,000 this year while West Papua wil have the lowest increase with 3.05 percent to Rp 1,450,000.

The nation's highest minimum wage was in Jakarta, which raised its minimum wage 18.54 percent to Rp 1,529,150; while the lowest was found in Gorontalo, with a hike of 9.84 percent to Rp 837,000, she said.

Myra told employers to give their workers fair treatment by increasing their salaries over the minimum wage "because what has been approved by the government is only the minimum wage, and employers are not allowed to pay their workers lower than the minimum."

A better remuneration system would benefit not only the workers but also employers because it would encourage workers to improve their productivity, she added.

Myra said she regretted that most provincial minimum wages were still below the decent wages mandated by the 2003 Labor Law and should be upgraded gradually over the next two years.

So far only nine provinces – North Sumatra, West Sumatra, Jambi, Yogyakarta, South Kalimantan, Southeast Sulawesi and South Sulawesi – have set minimum wages above or near the decent wage level.

The House of representatives' Commission IX overseeing labor criticized the new provincial minimum wages, which affect only the 33 million workers in the formal sector, while the wages of more than 76 million workers in the informal sector, cooperatives and micro-finance enterprises were left unregulated.

Commission IX deputy chairman Supriyatno and commission member Rieke Diah Pitaloka of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), said the commission would regulate setting of minimum sectoral wages in its planned revision of the 2003 Labor Law to provide protection to workers in the informal sector.