Minister: Salaries for local labour need to go up even if costs increase

 

Companies need to give better pay and benefits if they want to attract local workers, said Human Resources Minister V Sivakumar.

He said this amid complaints from employers that a government directive requiring at least 80 percent of local workers in the manufacturing sector by the end of next year - was unachievable.

“We have workers but due to certain issues, in terms of wages and other facilities, they prefer to work in neighbouring countries.

"We need to increase our salary scale even though we know it will increase our costs. We need to look into this matter seriously in the long term," he was quoted as saying by Bernama.

Sivakumar added that employers should not just stick to the RM1,500 minimum wage, but must also consider other facilities and obligations in order to keep Malaysian workers from migrating.

The 80:20 workforce requirement was introduced in 2016, and was originally set to be enforced by the end of this year.

However, the government announced last year that compliance would be pushed back to the end of 2024 as employers struggled to hire local workers.

The Malaysian Employers Federation (MEF) indicated that this problem persists, and that the 2024 target would be hard to achieve.

“The government needs to review the policy because it is not possible to achieve the 80 percent target," MEF president Syed Hussain Syed Husman was quoted as saying by FMT.

“Measures to assist manufacturing employers to digitalise processes and automate production should be enhanced, so that the manufacturing sector can reduce its current reliance on a labour-intensive system,” he added.

According to Sivakumar, about 1.8 million Malaysians are working abroad in Southeast Asia, of whom 1.18 million are employed in Singapore. - Mkini