The Malaysian Rubber Glove Manufacturers Association (MARGMA) requests for the Malaysian government to hold the minimum wage policy.
MARGMA said today that it had a meeting with its members regarding the impact of the minimum wage policy to the makers of rubber gloves.
Lim Kwee Shyan, President of MARGMA said that the industry players has been pressured with the new system that is about to be implemented which can discourage them to become more 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 added that the major concern of the rubber glove makers was the additional cost of RM150 million to be spent for employing 25,000 foreign rubber glove industry workers.
At the present, there are about two million of foreigners who work in the Malaysian rubber glove industry, the leading industry in the country, which can be translated into RM12 billion annually.
“We understand the need to take care of our lower rank workers, but minimum wage is not the way. We have continually upgraded our local workers to higher levels of skill so that they don’t have to compete with foreign workers,” he said.
Lim also said that foreign workers receive wages according to the skills they have and that most of them have low or no skill at all but happy because they are receiving a salary that they will not earn when they are working in their own countries or other countries.
“Hence there is no need for us to over-pay, resulting in us being less competitive,” he said.
Malaysia is the world’s top supplier of rubber gloves for the last 15 years. (RJA)