THE MINIMUM WAGES ORDER 2012

MANY puzzles and unhappiness were resulted from the just implemented Minimum Wages Order in Malaysia where general workers must be paid a minimum wage of RM900 in Semananjong and RM800 in Sabah.

The employers and the employees are faced with the many problems and the immense implications are building up. Information and feed back from the ground is definitely hurting to many people affected by this new guideline.

According to the people who made comments to the KK MP Hiew King Cheu saying that many workers were asked to leave their jobs due to their employers couldn’t afford any more to pay higher wages which is due to the constrain on their operating overheads and the prevailing business atmosphere affected by the current slowed down economic situation.

Hiew anyhow commented that he felt very concern, and would like to see a win-win situation whereby the employers and employees are being benefited and not being affected. Any one side being affected is not a good thing.

He said this can only be done through by uplifting the economic situation in Sabah and in Malaysia as a whole, whereby the employers are able to gain reasonable profits and sustainable to provide higher wages to the workers.

Therefore, to implement this Minimum Wages Order, the government must foremost to improve the economic situation in the country. For example, Indonesia had achieved current vibrant economy, and now they can afford to implement their minimum wages to their workers.

Many employers had negotiated and resorted to change the method to pay their workers by switching to “daily pay” to avoid to be penalized by the particular Minimum Wages Act, but most of them did not know the government had moved on step faster than them.

Surprisingly, there is a new ruling and guideline set by the Ministry of Human Resources and the National Wages Consultative Council called the “Guidelines on the Implementation of the Minimum Wages Order 2012” published on the 6th of September, 2012 specially mentioned the issue on ‘Daily Rated Employees’.

The daily minimum wages rates for Sabah, Sarawak and Federal Territory of Labuan are as follows:-

This is really unworkable because the daily paid workers will definitely choose to work only for 4 days with the same pay with less days of work. We don’t see the logic behind this formulation, and surely the employers will suffer more deeply.

This has to be reviewed immediately and we can not do thins according to arithmetic and plan calculation of figures. The employment policies are not game plays, but can affect the people seriously. The Consultative must revise the guidelines to be more practical in order not to create more confusion and inconveniences to the employers and employees.