Obviously, the Minister is only listening to employers who wouldn't want to pay the minimum wage to maximise profits for themselves.
Has she randomly interviewed employees to find out their side of the story and the true situation? This minister is only trying to prove a point to justify the mistake made in the computation of minimum wage for East Malaysia.
The current median wage for Sabah could be RM577 but that is an anomaly that have not been corrected for decades because of the presence of illegal immigrants who are prepared to accept low pay.Why should Sabahans be subjected to such poor treatment.
It is also ironic that the proposed minimum wage in Sabah and Sarawak is lower than West Malaysia, whereas the cost of living is much higher in East Malaysia.
The West Malaysian civil servants who did the computation should have their heads examine.I reckoned they are just too lazy to carry out a fact finding mission to get the correct data and reliable feedback from the ground.
I simply could not accept the argument that RM800 minimum wage is too much and would kill Sabah economy.It's absurd, a lame excuse and a lot of craps where it is coming from.
Employers in Sabah are used to low productivity whereby they employ two persons to do one person's job.This is false economy and the minister should be bright enough to understand what she just said is a lot of rubbish. Minimum wage for Sabah should be higher than West Malaysia.
I pay my maid who is a foreigner on work pass RM1,000.00 per month, free food, free accommodation and paid return fare every two years to her country for 3 weeks holiday.I don't believe people, particularly, Sabahans, should earn anything less than RM1,000. per month.
To reduce costs employers should teach their workers to be more systematic to increase productivity.Your workers performance is dependent on how you train them.Paying less is not going help increase productivity, it'll only help keep us in the economic backwater.
Businesses may close shop if, Sabah minimum wage RM900: Minister
Kuala Lumpur: The RM800 monthly minimum wage set for Sabah, Sarawak and Labuan is far above the current median wage, Deputy Minister of Human Resources Datuk Maznah Mazlan said Monday.
She said the current median wage for Sabah and Labuan was RM577 whereas in Sarawak it was RM738.
"In Sabah, for example, the RM800 minimum wage is 39 per cent more than the median wage, which means that no less than 50 per cent of workers in Sabah will get a raise of at least 39 per cent," she said after opening the Human Resource Ministry-National Institute of Public Administration (Intan) executive discourse on "Implementation of Minimum Wage Catalyst for a High-Income Nation", here.
Maznah said the minimum wage set for Sabah, Sarawak and Labuan was agreed upon by representatives of both employees and employers, after taking into consideration the different factors affecting the states involved.
She said if the minimum wage was set at RM900 like in the peninsula, it was feared that employers, especially the smaller ones, would face difficulty in carrying on their business or might have to shut down altogether.
"The surge to RM900 would shock employers and it certainly has its implications whereby employees could lose jobs, which would ultimately lead to many other problems," she said.
The Congress of Unions of Employees in the Public and Civil Services (Cuepacs) had called on the Government to set the minimum wage for the private sector in Sabah and Sarawak at RM1,000, saying employees in those states faced a high cost of living.
While announcing the minimum wage on April 30, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak had said that the difference in the wage was just for a start and that the Government hoped it could be streamlined to a single rate nationwide.- Bernama
