KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 9 — The Malaysian Rubber Glove Manufacturers Association (MARGMA) wants the government to defer the implementation of the minimum wage policy.
In a statement today, MARGMA said it recently had a dialogue session with its members to discuss the impact of the policy to the manufacturers.
Its president, Lim Kwee Shyan, said the association was concerned as the new salary system was expected to put pressure on industry players and could make them less competitive.
“With the implementation of minimum wage policy on January 1, 2013, there will be a cost increase of RM500 for each unskilled worker, the majority of whom are foreign workers,” he said.
He said with the sluggish economy, affordability would be a major concern as the manufacturers were expected to spend an additional RM150 million for about 25,000 foreign workers in the rubber glove industry.
The country has about two million foreign workers and that would translate into about RM12 billion a year, he said.
“We understand the need to take care of our lower rank workers, but minimum wage is not the way. We have continuously upgraded our local workers to higher level of skill so that they don’t have to compete with foreign workers,” he said.
Lim said foreign workers were paid according to their skills.
“Those with low or no skill are happy with their current pay compared with what they can earn in their own country or neighbouring countries.
“Hence there is no need for us to over-pay, resulting in us being less competitive,” he said.
For the last 15 years, Malaysia has been the world’s top supplier of rubber gloves.
The top four companies, which are also Malaysian companies, control RM8 billion of the overall market capitalisation in the industry.
Last year, the country exported close to 98 billion pieces of rubber gloves to more than 180 countries, bringing in RM9.89 billion in export revenue.
The export value of rubber gloves for the first six months of this year stood at RM5.16 billion.
Source: Bernama
