‘Majority of migrant workers hired by SMEs on daily wage, no contract'

CORONAVIRUS | A larger percentage of foreign workers employed by local small and medium-sized enterprises were hired without a formal employment contract or only paid a daily wage, revealed SME Association of Malaysia president Michael Kang.

"The legal foreign workers, I think the percentage is not very high, about 15 percent.

"I think the majority of them are illegal (irregular) workers," Kang (below) said in an interview with Astro Awani's “Consider This” news segment last night.

He was responding to a question on whether Putrajaya's expanded three-month wage subsidy scheme - that now covers all local workers with a salary of RM4,000 and below - will have an impact on SMEs that hire a significant number of foreign workers.

"I think there is quite a number of illegal (irregular) workers [...] They are based on daily job payments or they don't have any contracts.

"So when (companies) totally shut down I think those illegal (irregular) workers, those SMEs don't need to pay them," he said.

"(Companies are) only focused on those legal workers and that is why we (SME Association) have asked the government to look into the levy.

"And that is why the government gives 25 percent discount on levy," he added.

Aside from the tiered wage subsidy scheme, Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin yesterday announced a 25 percent reduction in foreign worker levy from April to December 2020, as part of the government's RM10 billion additional allocation for SMEs in the Prihatin economic stimulus package.

Since the enforcement of the MCO, migrant worker communities in Malaysia have been identified as being among vulnerable groups affected by the shutdown of various operations not listed as an essential service.

On April 1, Foreign Minister Hishammuddin Hussein denied claims by Jakarta-based NGO Migrant Care that a large number of Indonesians were forced to leave Malaysia over Covid-19 fears.

Instead, he said those who left - including those who lost their jobs - had done so on their own free will.

Last Friday, Indonesia's Kompas.com reported that three military vessels have been placed on standby in Batam to ferry an anticipated 20,000 workers who arrived from Malaysia through ports in Johor. - Mkini