Its minister, M Saravanan, said that although warnings had been issued to errant employers, the complaints still came in, adding that the ministry was acting on them.

“I often receive complaints of employers taking the opportunity to instruct employees to continue working even though SOPs have been set for companies that are allowed to operate.

“The ministry will soon issue a work from home policy,” he told a press conference here after distributing food baskets at the Mahatma Gandhi Hall here today.

He said most of the complaints were on employees being forced to come in to work. As of yesterday 5,177 complaints were received nationwide since the application was introduced on May 3.

He said it was not necessary for workers to go to the labour office to lodge complaints as it could be made directly through the WFW application and would be acted on within seven days.

On July 2, it was reported that the state with the highest number of WFH complaints was Selangor with 696 complaints, followed by Kuala Lumpur (505), Johor (196) and Penang (123).

A total of 59 compound notices on violation of worker attendance capacity at the office or workplace had been issued by the labour department and the occupational safety and health department between June 1 and July 1.

Deputy minister Awang Hashim had said earlier that the ministry had received 2,154 complaints since May on employers not allowing their staff to work from home.

“Other types of complaints include non-payment of or delayed salaries (1,180 cases) and 388 cases of unlawful wage deductions,” he said.

On the food aid, Saravanan, who is the Tapah MP, said 37,000 food baskets had been distributed to residents since the MCO last year while under the People’s Well-being and Economic Recovery Package (Pemulih) programme 7,000 baskets have been distributed so far.