The Social Protection Contributors Advisory Association Malaysia (SPCAAM) said employers should not use the Covid-19 pandemic as an excuse to reject the proposal.

SPCAAM adviser Callistus Antony D’Angelus said employers who could not afford to pay their workers a living wage “do not deserve to be in business”.

“MEF’s claim that businesses have not recovered from the pandemic, if true, points towards the inability of business leaders in Malaysia to run their businesses.

“Does the MEF actually represent employers in Malaysia?

“I am sure that many businesses would want to fulfil their social responsibilities by ensuring that their workers, in particular those at the bottom of the wage hierarchy, are paid a fair and decent wage,” he said in a statement.

Yesterday, SPCAAM urged the government to make it mandatory for all employers to provide at least one month’s salary as festival aid, citing its implementation in Indonesia.

Its president, J Solomon, also cited an EPF study which found that people in the Klang Valley spent close to an entire month’s salary on annual social and festive activities.

However, MEF president Syed Hussain Syed Husman said this proposal would place a significant financial burden on employers at a time when most businesses were “merely surviving”.

He also said groups such as SPCAAM “must understand that businesses are not banks”.

D’Angelus said one compromise that the government could consider would be to first mandate the one-month bonus for businesses with the financial capacity.

“Businesses raking in profits in the tens of millions of ringgit cannot claim they don’t have the capacity to pay.”

He said Putrajaya could come up with a mechanism to identify the firms with the financial means to pay this bonus.