PETALING JAYA: An opposition MP has urged Putrajaya to review the bill to amend the Employment Act 1955 (Act 265), describing it as a “half-hearted” attempt at amending the law.
Klang MP Charles Santiago said the Employment Amendment Bill 2021 failed to remove a RM2,000 monthly wage cut-off for those eligible to be covered by the Act, pointing out that this was included in draft amendments back in 2018.
“This means that workers who earn above the cut-off wage of RM2,000 would not be covered by the amended Employment Act,” he said in a statement today.
Citing how median income in Malaysia stood at RM2,062 in 2020 according to the statistics department, Santiago said this implied that only around half of the 9.4 million wage earners in Malaysia would be covered by the Act.
He also said the bill will remove provisions that stipulate sexual harassment, provide for maternity protection to all workers regardless of wage level, and empower the human resources ministry’s director-general to probe and decide on wage-related disputes for workers earning up to RM5,000 a month.
“The current amendments have also failed to identify grounds for discrimination unlike the initial proposal, which included comprehensive language and identified specific grounds such as gender, religion, race, disability, marital status, pregnancy, language, and age,” he said.
Instead, he said, these provisions were replaced by a general provision empowering the director-general to probe and decide on disputes related to discrimination and make an order.
“With these shortcomings, the government needs to re-examine the amendments or it would make a mockery of the bill’s initial objective of aligning the Employment Act with international labour standards,” he said. - FMT
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