There are a lot of wives, husbands and children of hotel managers crying out for help to save their beloved ones from being abused by the latter's top-level management . Most of the local hotels' top-level management are abusing their powers by forcing middle management to work long hours.

A rank and file staff works eight hours a day and any extra hours will be considered as overtime but for managers, they are required to work from morning till late night and to report back for duty the very next morning.

Many managers have no say in this matter and are in an awkward position as far as lodging a formal compliant on the problem they are facing. Further more in some hotels, managers are not provided with punch cards to record their working hours. This ensures there is no proof of their unreasonable working hours.

In some hotels, a middle manager who earns an income of RM1,800 is working at least 16 hours a day without getting any extra off days. This has affected their marriage and their children's upbringing. The number of divorce cases among such managers is up with the welfare of the children being neglected.

This is not the only issue. A person who works for 16 hours a day, 6 days a week with one off day (on which they have to come back for meetings) doesn't have time to take care of his own health. Without adequate rest how is a person is going to produce what top management needs not to mention raising a happy family.

Some of the excuses given by the hotels' top management is that they, too, are working long hours so why can't middle management? But in most hotels, the top managements are mostly expatriates and they stay in the hotel itself. They often forget that the middle-level managers have a family to take care of too.

It is the time for the government to look into this issue seriously and come out with a rules to protect these abused employees. The government needs to step in to protect the poor managers, at least for the sake of their families.