Its director-general, Mohd Razali Hussain, said holidays were important to allow people to spend quality time with their families.
He said as long as companies planned ahead and managed their human resources well, productivity would not be affected by the number of public holidays the government observed.
The key to increasing productivity at the workplace, he said, was good cooperation between bosses and the employees.
“Each organisation has its work schedules and some also have programmes to raise employees’ productivity.
“If employers plan well, there will be no wastage or disruption (due to public holidays).
“There is nothing preventing companies from giving off days, as long as the organisations remain productive and the employees work as a team.
“Public holidays don’t affect workers’ productivity. We may have more public holidays than other countries, but companies can pick which public holidays they wish to observe,” he told FMT at the Productivity Day programme at Indkom Engineering Sdn Bhd.
According to the Employment Act, it is compulsory for employers to grant workers a minimum of 11 public holidays, five of which are compulsory.
Razali also said the government was not ready to implement the six-hour work day as the country’s productivity was not yet on par with the productivity levels of its workers.
If Malaysia was to implement six-hour work days like some countries have, it would first have to increase its productivity levels four times over.
“The approach to work would have to change and we would have to be more efficient when it came to productivity. If workers are together with us on this, then we can implement it.”
Former secretary-general of the Malaysian Trades Union Congress (MTUC), N Gopal Kishnam, had earlier appealed to the government to consider cutting down the number of hours in a work day as long hours badly affected workers’ productivity.
He said in Sweden, the six-hour work day policy had had a good impact on workers.
He said several countries in the region had also reduced their working hours to 40 per week, compared with Malaysia’s 48.