PSM meets Human Resource Ministry

PSM meets Human Resource Ministry

Pusat Bandar Damansara, 25 February, 2009

This morning, leaders of Parti Sosialis Malaysia led by National Chairperson Dr. Nasir Hashim and Deputy Chairperson M.Saraswathy handed a seven point memorandum to the Minister, Dato S. Subramaniam.

The meeting started with Party’s Secretary General S. Arutchelvan thanking the Minister for the meeting, as before this, only a demonstration outside the Ministry would get some senior officials to attend to the memorandum. The Minister replied that he was exposing us to a new culture.

The Meeting went on smoothly and the Minister was quite open to the suggestion put forward by the party. The Minister was not defensive when criticized about how funds had been handled by the Barisan National previously.

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PSM started the meeting by saying that the economic crisis is the most important event facing the nation and that political parties and politician should focus on the crisis rather than other issues which has been dominating the main stream media. PSM feels that the nation would be undergoing an emergency period and that emergency measures need to be taken by the Government of the day. PSM slammed the recent reporting in the media that gives an impression that the economy is fine and that there are lots of job vacancies. Based on the feedback from the people, PSM is convinced that those reports about economy being fine and people are living comfortably is untrue and misleading.

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PSM puts forward a class argument. The BN government seems to be helping the capitalist handle the crisis rather than the workers. PSM being a socialist and a workers based party is very concerned that the plight of the working class was not addressed in Najib’s stimulant packages.
Some of the glaring questioned raised by PSM in the memorandum is as below:

The Government Package What PSM is calling for
RM 5 billion was taken from KWSP and given to Valuecap to bail out companies whop failed in the stock market. Why not use just 10% of that amount to provide a safety net for workers and start a retrenchment fund? After all KWSP is workers fund. Why use KWSP money to bail out the bosses?
RM 7 billion package proposed by Najib Tun Razak to further stimulate the economy. Would the money be trickling down to workers? We are worried the money will be used in the by-elections and be sub contracted and sub contracted until the last contractor have no choice but to employ cheap foreign labour. PSM propose tighter and transparent control of the money.
During economic crisis, banks do renegotiate loans for businesses and companies. Why not similar measures be done for the retrenched workers. The government can work out a mechanism for those whose income has dropped by renegotiate and restructure the loans they took to buy a house or to start a business.
We will send back foreign labour first. Foreign labour is currently employed to cater for the cheap labour policy, to help capitalist make more profit. Introduce Minimum Living wage Act to curb cheap foreign labour.
Considering in reducing corporate tax. Corporate tax should not be reduced from its current level of 27%. If this were done, it would be very difficult to bring the corporate tax back up when the recession resolves. A lowered rate of corporate tax will lead to either higher fees for essential services or to new forms of tax such as the regressive Goods and Sales Tax. It would definitely not be in the interest of workers for the corporate tax to be reduced.
Saraswathy also highlighted that contract workers and those losing their OT will be ignored as the current HR plans are to help only those retrenched workers. Most Malaysian earn very low wages. The OT is their only main source of income. Therefore these workers will not be covered under the government retrenchment scheme. The Minister said that this was a good point and will see how to help workers who lose their income from OT.

In the meeting also, Dr. Jeyakumar called for money not to be simply taken. Dr. Kumar said that we are going into a long drawn crisis which may last for two years. He called for the Government to ensure that those who have no jobs and no sources of income are provided with food stamps so that they get the basic food. We cannot let anyone starve. Work is a basic human right. It is a corollary of the Right to Life! No work - no food - no life!! Every family must be able to find work. The inability to find work is not just the individual’s own personal problem. Society has a responsibility to ensure that all those who want to work can work!

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Dato S.Subramaniam agreed to some of the suggestion. He said that the Government is working towards a retrenchment fund and doing a study with ILO. He was also annoyed that there is only on-line system for workers who have lost jobs and asked for simple forms to be made available in all labour departments.

Dr. Nasir in his closing remark said that, during the boom, they have made their money and it is not right to punish the workers now. The recession was not caused by the ordinary people - workers or small businessmen. However they suffer the worst because they do not have reserves and usually their family members will also be struggling and not in a position to offer much help. It is the failure of the capitalist market system which is making the workers poor.