The Star သတင္းစာမွ Illegal levy deduction should stop: MTUC

ဤသတင္းအား မူရင္း link တြင္             တိုက္ရိုက္ဖတ္ရႈရန္

ဤသတင္းအား အေထာက္အထား            pdf file ရယူရန္

 

Illegal levy deduction should stop: MTUC

Published: Sunday October 25, 2009 MYT 3:01:00 PM

PETALING JAYA: The Malaysian Trades Union Congress (MTUC) called on the Labour Department to prosecute employers who continue to deduct levy from salaries of their foreign workers.
According to MTUC vice-president, A. Balasubramaniam, hundreds of workers have been "cheated" by errant employers who continue to deduct the levy from their salaries although they have renewed their work permits after April 1, the date from which the levy was to be entirely borne by employers.
Prior to this, employers were allowed to pay the levy upfront and later make monthly deductions from their workers' salaries.
Balasubramaniam said that last week, about 2,500 foreign workers at a glove-making factory in Klang staged a five-hour "strike" in protest of the management's deduction of the levy from their salaries.
Similar complaints were also received from various parts of the country, he told Bernama.
Labour director-general Datuk Ismail Abdul Rahim meanwhile said that his department was continuing to be vigilant and was conducting checks on all establishments to ensure that there were no illegal levy deductions.
He said that employers were allowed to continue making deductions for workers who were employed prior to April 1, but this was only until the expiry of the work permits.
For all renewals and new employees after April 1, the employers should pay the levy, he added.
He advised workers whose levy was still being deducted after the renewal of their permits to report the matter to the labour office.
He said that the rationale of making the employer pay for the levy was to discourage them from taking foreign workers.
The levy, paid annually, varies from sector to sector, with RM1,200 per foreign worker for the manufacturing and construction sector, RM1,800 for restaurant and RM360 for maids. - Bernama