Govt may allocate funds to increase public sector wages, says Rafizi

 

Rafizi Ramli said an allocation for a wage hike was no different from spending billions on infrastructure projects but with more people getting the benefit instead of a few companies and their workers.

GEORGE TOWN: Economy minister Rafizi Ramli said he will be meeting Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim later today over the possibility of setting aside an allocation to help increase the wages of those in the public sector.

Rafizi said that if Putrajaya were to earmark a huge allocation to increase wages every year, it would ultimately be injected back into the economy.

Higher wages would also lead to increased tax collection, he said.

Rafizi said currently only 10% of the population earned above the taxable bracket.

“So it is a problem when we want to collect taxes. We simply can’t because wages are low,” he said at a ceramah here last night.

Rafizi said allocating a large sum to help increase wages was the same as setting aside billions of ringgit to build airports, highways and roads.

The only difference, however, is that the funds spent on such insfrastructure projects would only benefit a “few companies and their workers”.

“I hope to discuss the matter with the prime minister and convince him to implement something, which would be a first for the country.

“One where the government intervenes to raise the wages of workers.”

On Friday, Rafizi said employers reacted positively to the government’s progressive wage policy.

He added that that the progressive wage policy paper will be presented to the National Economic Action Council (NEAC) today.

Meanwhile, Rafizi also revealed that data collected by the statistics department revealed that the median wage for employees stood at RM2,600, which is lower than the liveable wage of RM3,100.

He said the median wage currently sits only a few hundred ringgit above the poverty line of RM2,100. - FMT