In a press conference held at the Sabah chapter of the Malaysian Trades Union Congress (MTUC) here today, SAC3 deputy director Marina Abd Ghanie said the University College Sabah Foundation (UCSF) had yet to pay the December salary of 51 permanent staff and three months’ salaries of six contract staff.
UCSF is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Sabah Foundation.
All the other staff of UCSF from other departments and centres received their December salaries yesterday due to the coming Christmas holiday season.
SAC3, which was set up in 2009, was originally placed under Kolej Yayasan Sabah (KYS), as the implementing agency, before being transferred to UCSF in 2014.
All expenditure, including the emoluments of staff, are borne by the Sabah Economic Development and Investment Authority (SEDIA) which channels the funds through UCSF to pay SAC3’s salaries and bills.
SAC3 brings in more than RM3 million annually to UCSF while the staff’s monthly salaries total RM200,000, including payments to the Employees Provident Fund (EPF).
Marina said the problem started when their September salaries were only paid on Oct 12 and Nov 2.
Basic salaries for the month of October and November were then paid on Dec 3 and Dec 19 to 51 members of the permanent staff. The six contract employees were not paid.
The SAC3, she said, had lodged a complaint with the Labour Department but the claims from six staff members could not be entertained as their salaries were above the RM5,000 limit of the department.
“A meeting between SAC3, UCSF and SEDIA was held on Nov 30 to discuss the outstanding dues. However, UCSF refused to pay SAC3 the salaries even though SEDIA wanted to reimburse the RM1 million claim to UCSF in the first week of December,” she said.
Marina said she had sent appeal letters to the Sabah Foundation director twice but was told to discuss the matter with UCSF first. She said she had written to Sabah Foundation as it is the owner of UCSF.
Appeal for help
At the same time, she said she made an appeal for support and assistance from the state’s education and innovation ministry.
Some of the staff members, she said, had even lodged police reports after finding out their loan repayments through payroll deductions were not made.
“Two staff members have received notices from banks to auction their houses because they have not been able to pay their mortgages for three months now.”
She added there was also evidence that EPF for 51 staff members were not paid for October while the EPF for November and December were paid on Dec 18.
The EPF for six staff members, including four staff members from the Peninsular, have not been paid since October.
Despite the problems, Marina said they had continued to work as the centre currently has 204 students, 90% of whom are under scholarship from Yayasan Sime Darby and the Sabah Economic Planning Unit (EPU).
“Some of the students have also complained that they have not been receiving their monthly allowances since April and some since August,” she said.
“We hope we can get fair treatment from the UCSF management in this matter. We have tried to ask for assistance from various sources but to no avail.
“We have families to feed and financial commitments to fulfil, but UCSF seems to deliberately delay our salaries without any sense of guilt,” she said.
When contacted, an officer in the UCSF human resource department told FMT that SAC3 is not under the UCSF and it is the sole responsibility of the Institute for Development Studies (IDS).
Hence, the officer said the whole issue had been a huge misunderstanding on the part of SAC3.
However, the department could not explain why the appointment letters and salary slips of the staff were made under UCSF.
A letter dated Sept 21 this year from IDS chairman Simon Sipaun to the UCSF effectively denied the UCSF claim that SAC3 belonged to IDS.
Sipaun, in the letter, said IDS had decided not to take over SAC3 as it “did not have the financial capability to take over SAC3”.