T

he Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI)’s Yogyakarta branch announced on Thursday that a decent monthly salary for journalists working in the province should be Rp 3,147,980 (US$346).

“This is far above the 2011 provincial minimum wage [UMP] of Rp 808,000 that AJI and 35 other workers’ organizations and activists have also firmly rejected,” AJI Yogyakarta member Bambang Muryanto said while presenting the results of a survey at a forum on Thursday.

The survey, held from Dec. 16, 2010, to Jan. 7, 2011, asked 10 Yogyakarta-based journalists from different media including print, TV, radio and online about how much money they needed to have a decent quality of life, Bambang said.

The survey also revealed that some media firms paid their journalists above the UMP and others below.

Many journalists in the province, the survey said, received monthly salaries that included wealth allowances, but that other media still paid based on work produced, with some rates less than Rp 25,000 per story.

“This is very concerning especially because as the fourth pillar of democracy, journalists play an important role in maintaining press freedom that we have been enjoying for the last few years,” said Bambang who himself is a Yogyakarta-based freelance journalist.

When journalists do not receive a decent salary, he said, they would be easily tempted to do something that might endanger their independence and the quality of their reporting. This could be a serious threat to the people’s rights to receive true information as guaranteed by laws.

“We therefore urge mass media in the province to give their journalists decent payment so they will also be able to work professionally,” Bambang said.

The alliance also urged Yogyakarta Governor Sultan Hamengkubuwono X to adjust the 2011 UMP according to the cost of living a decent life in the province and to apply different wage standards for different professions.

Provincial councilor Arif Rahman Hakim said the provincial legislative council was ready to deliberate a draft bylaw on wages that they had initiated last year.

He said the proposed draft would regulate the urgency of applying a sectorial waging system.

Once approved, he said, there would no longer be just a single minimum wage but more than one according to the existing sectors of working fields.

The survey reveals that for Kupang-based journalists, a decent wage would be Rp 3.9 million.

The AJI found that many journalists were still being paid below the NTB’s UMP which was set at Rp 850,000.

The survey also found that most publications in Kupang did not have labor unions or similar organizations that would represent journalists’ at times when their rights were at issue.

The AJI’s Kupang branch urged the publications to increase wages regularly on an individual basis based on journalists’ performance.

— Yemris Fointuna contributed to the report from Kupang