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The investment community must not work with companies involved in corrupt practices to assist the government's efforts in battling graft, said Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
"Have a look at the National Anti-Corruption Plan (NACP) and you will discover how serious the government is in combatting corruption.
"I must stress here that there is an important role for those in the investment community in helping eradicate corruption.
"The least you can do is not to buy shares or make deals with directors or companies that are involved in corrupt practices," he told the Invest Malaysia 2019 conference in Kuala Lumpur today.
On the government's part, he said, measures have been taken to ensure active politicians are not appointed as Malaysian head of missions or in any listed government-linked companies (GLCs).
He said GLCs often had a bad reputation for crowding out the private sector, but insisted this was not the intention.
Instead, he said, GLCs are supposed to play catalytic roles to support the economy. He thus invited the private sector to join GLCs in fulfilling the national economic agenda.
Importance of people's welfare
Mahathir added that the people’s welfare was equal in importance to economic growth.
"We do know that a nation's development is not just about its gross domestic product (GDP) or the market capitalisation of the stock market.
"It is about building a better standard of living for everyone," he said.
Society should not be so unequal that capital owners were able to take a large chunk of the national income and leave their workers with scraps, he said.
"So I urge all of you to have a stakeholder mindset. Pay your workers better if you make more profit.
"We noticed that the pay for CEOs has been increasing multiple folds, but workers' wages had been slow on the rise, if not stagnant. This is not right," Mahathir said.
However, he later said during the dialogue session that workers also need to increase their productivity if they want their wages to be raised.
"Revision in pay will invariably increase the value of things and cause a higher cost of living, so they (the workers) must be able to understand that if you want to have more pay, you must learn to be more productive," he said.
Workers could improve their productivity through better education and training, he suggested.
He warned that if people expected better pay simply because they had unions which could go on strike and "destroy the whole economy", they would ultimately lose out even if they received higher wages. - Mkini
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