Hundreds of workers demonstrated in front of Jakarta’s City Hall today to demand that Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama increase the province’s minimum monthly wage from the current Rp 3.1 million to Rp 3.8 million.
The workers argue that the Rp 700,000 increase was justified based on inflation in the government’s cost of living index, which the minimum wage is supposed to be pegged to. However, Ahok has said that another 2015 regulation prevents him from setting such a large increase and said he would raise the minimum wage to Rp 3.3 million instead.
Obviously, the workers were not happy to hear this and during today’s rally threatened to take extreme measures if their wishes weren’t met.
“We will close the Cikampek toll road. We will close the Serang Toll Road,” said one of the demonstrations speakers, as quoted by Okezone.
The speaker also claimed that workers would shut down other parts of the city and even bring the economy to a standstill.
“We going to close Pulo Gadung. We are ready to paralyze the economy of Indonesia. We are not playing around,” he said
