The Federal Territories minister, who is popularly known as Ku Nan, pointed to a recent study showing that a total of 1,276 City Hall employees faced difficulties during loan repayment.
Tengku Adnan said the study, conducted by DBKL’s higher management, showed that some of its staff were only left with RM50-RM100 in their pockets – the amount they had to live on for the rest of the month after a huge deduction from their salary to repay loans.
Speaking at the monthly DBKL gathering in Cheras this morning, the minister added that many of these people worked as support staff.
He said DBKL was working closely with the National Co-operative Movement of Malaysia (Angkasa), the domestic trade, co-operatives and consumerism ministry and accountant-general’s department to find the right and practical solution to this issue.
Angkasa provides salary deduction services to government servants, co-operatives statutory bodies, clubs, co-operatives, unions and government-linked companies.
Tengku Adnan said one way to help the staff would be to absorb and restructure the loans.
“DBKL can afford this. Maybe we will stretch the repayment period longer and impose lower interest to help them.”
He also said business operators that provided services, or the purchase of goods through instalments, were the root cause of the problem.
“The problem is, they want things now and keep on purchasing. And at the end they only have RM50, RM100 in their pocket,” Tengku Adnan said, in urging Putrajaya to look into the matter.
He said the study had also found a measure of cheating involved in some loan applications. He added, however, that such issues were not unique to DBKL staff and occurred also with government staff in general.
“We are checking on heads of department that sign the papers and documents to say that so-and-so obtained a salary much higher than what he earned just so as to enable him to apply for more loans.”
Tengku Adnan highlighted the case of a teacher in Putrajaya whose salary was about RM6,000 but only took home RM700 as the rest was deducted to pay loans.
“There was also a driver attached to the Prime Minister’s Department. His salary was RM3,000 but he ended up with zero in his pocket as every sen he earned was used to repay his loans.”