PSM urges immediate measures: Expected job losses shocking
Has the Human Resources Minister started crunching numbers of expected job losses due to the Covid 19 pandemic? Has he begun thinking about mitigation measures to address this large wave of unemployment that is going to sweep this country? PSM is very concerned about the number of workers whom will be losing their jobs and families going into poverty.
We have no time to wait for the MCO to end before we start thinking of support measures such as re training and employment schemes for Malaysians that would lose their income. Failure to act immediately will result in millions being pushed into sudden poverty unable to put food on their table.
It is expected that anything from 2 million to 2.5 million workers are expected to lose their jobs (refer the estimates in Table 1 below). The hard hit sectors would be obviously the hotel, F&B, tourism and related industries that might see at least 40% of their current workforce losing jobs. Other sectors affected from 30% to 20% would be Manufacturing, Construction, Services and Entertainment business. We have also taken into consideration the estimates from Malaysiakini article by Bridget Welsh & Calvin Cheng (https://www.malaysiakini.com/columns/521283) to arrive at these estimates.
Thus shockingly we could see around 2.5 million workers that is 16% of our total labour force losing their jobs.
Still we have yet to comprehend the full impact of the MCO, but the above figure gives us an insight into the extent of the impact. Example, even though F&B sector was allowed to operate during the MCO, but the requirement to only provide take away and non-dine, has caused many restaurants to cut their staff as workers are only needed for food preparation and there is no need for waiters.
PSM urges the Human Resources Ministry to urgently relook at the Employment Insurance Scheme ( Skim Insurance Pekerja) launched by PERKESO in 2018. This scheme would have been derived based on job loss figures under ‘normal’ circumstances. Prior to Covid 19 pandemic shock, annually only 30,000 to 40,000 workers were losing their jobs for various reasons. Thus PERKESO has to seriously relook at its payout estimates with the avalanche of claims that could be made due to this high numbers of job losses.
PSM also feels that the current payout scheme for six months won’t be sufficient. Currently workers are requested to submit a form to prove that they have been actively looking for work to enable them to claim the monthly benefits for up to six months. But with the looming economic recession which is expected to last from 18 months to 2 years, workers will struggle to find alternate jobs. Even though if they do find a job, it will be certainly pay lower wages as employers are also trying to tighten their belts to revive their businesses.
Retraining schemes too has to be reformed, as the pandemic has hit hard on many economic sectors across the board. Thus there is little use to have training programs for tourism, for example, when we know that it will be close to impossible to find new employment in that sector for another 1 to 2 years at least. Thus PSM urges the Ministry and HRDF to revamp their current training programs and identify potential industries that might survive this recession and could provide employment.
The Stimulus packages announced by the government were for short term goals to address impacts on the rakyat and businesses for the next 6 months. But in view that the private sector will drastically cut back hiring workers to cut cost, thus the government has no choice but to step in and offer employment to these workers.
When the market fails to provide jobs for workers, the government has to seriously consider a universal basic income for the unemployed to cushion their financial burden. We cannot continue to depend on foreign direct investment or export led economy to provide jobs as the global pandemic has thrown a crushing blow to potential investment and economies from Europe, US to China. Furthermore all these attempts by government to lure FDI from MNCs’ with multiple incentives and tax holidays will not be gratified. These self-serving MNCs’ will abandon our economy to look for lower cost countries to continue to reap profits.
It’s time to look at building domestic job opportunities through often neglected local resources and potential industry sectors. As private enterprise is only keen investing in safe profitable sectors, the burden to open up new potential sectors lies on the government’s shoulder.
We need to invest and create jobs to develop renewable energy and greenhouse gas reduction efforts. Our rivers need to be cleaned, re-forestation needs to done aggressively and recycling needs to be implemented urgently to reduce landfill waste. These need manpower and we can easily provide jobs for thousands of workers to kick start these green programs that would reap long term benefits to our country.
The importance of our public healthcare sector has been reemphasized in the past months. They have been our frontline warriors to fight the pandemic. Thus post Covid 19, we should employ more manpower to strengthen public healthcare. Can we retrain, those retrenched workers to be paramedics, technicians, medical facility maintenance providers, hygiene technicians, lab technicians, administrators or even as general health field workers?
The world renowned Cuban public healthcare system prides itself in its thousands of doctors and healthcare workers that are responsible for their communities placing prevention as a key priority. Can we retrain our workers to be social workers putting them in charge of specific communities ensuring that they lead a healthy lifestyle and are provided for. They too can double up as Jabatan Kebajikan Malaysia JKM officers to directly identify needy communities and provide food packs and other assistance needed.
We need to think out of the box, reducing our dependency on the developed world (not so developed, looking at how they handled the Covid19 pandemic) to provide growth and jobs and begin to chart our own path redefining growth in our own terms.
Has our government started thinking beyond?
A.Sivarajan is a Secretary General Parti Sosialis Malaysia
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of The Leaders Online
