Government servants in Sabah want the retirement scheme in the state civil service and Government Linked Corporations (GLCs) revamped.

The Sabah chapter of the Malaysian Trade Union Congress (MTUC) said thousands of retirees in the state have been futilely seeking their pensions which have been denied them under anomalies. Those receiving pensions are getting less than RM150 per month.

"We must consider their contributions to the development of the state from the colonial era to the 1970s, and later," said Sabah MTUC chairperson Simon Yayun Lamadas. "It is sad to see so many civil servants sidelined in this manner."

Lamadas was commenting on an appeal recently by the Sabah Government Pensioners Association (PPKS) on behalf of "thousands of retired civil servants in Sabah who are without pensions".

Lamadas said it was an affront to the dignity and rights of workers to be placed in temporary service posts for 30 years and more. He asked why they were not absorbed into permanent service in line with their job designations.

The alternative, he said, would have been to let them go after an agreed period which then can reasonably be considered to be temporary.

In the case of the GLCs, the Sabah MTUC wants the minimum pension to be raised to RM720 per month in line with the practice in the public sector.

He sees no reason why most of the retirees have to subsist on as little as RM150 per month despite being willing to make sacrifices to continue working under the privatisation exercises.

"We cannot deny their contributions to the national economy," said Lamadas. "Most have been working for more than 25 years, both in the government service and after privatisation."

Lamadas estimates that at least 10,000 former GLC workers are subsisting on meager pensions. These are the workers affected by the corporatisation and privatisation of government statutory bodies and departments. The main GLCs involved are Malaysia Airports Berhad, Telekom Malaysia and Pos Malaysia.

The thrust of the claim by former state civil servants outside the GLCs is that a "retirement allowance" is provided for under the Industrial and Manual Group (IMG) staff scheme.

It is in line with Service Circular No C117/60 Appendix M1 which follows the Service Regulations for Industrial and Manual Staff.

The specific clause comes under Section 15, Part 11 Page 172 of the service regulations.

Apparently, workers under this scheme were paid monthly on a daily rated basis or Open Vote System, although this is not stipulated under service regulations.

The government, it is held, "most probably lost track of the thousands employed under the IMG and for convenience placed them under the Open Vote System".

'Service regulations drawn up by the British'

Most of the affected workers are from the Public Works Department (PWD). These include about 3,000 workers previously employed as lorry, tractor, and grader drivers, plant operators, mechanics, welders, electricians, carpenters, builders and general workers, among others.

PPKS secretary Dennis H L Lim is calling for public support for the rights of the retirees after their efforts to lobby quietly over many years ran into a dead end.

Lim says most of the affected workers were employed by the British in the late 1950s and 1960s. These workers were retained when local heads of departments took over from the British in the 1970s following independence in 1963.

"Their services were badly needed for various rural development projects especially in the PWD to construct inter-district roads throughout Sabah," said Lim. "The word temporary cannot be used to cover a period of 30 years."

Lim admits that the service regulations were drawn up by the British colonial administrators to include temporary semi-skilled and manual workers. These were required to work for short periods until a certain project was completed.

It seems that the local department heads who took over from the British never studied the service regulations. They kept the workers on a temporary basis despite the latter putting in applications for permanent posts.

"If these department heads had taken their jobs seriously and done their work, these retirees and their families need not be suffering now," said Lim.

"Instead the department heads delegated the task of dealing with applications from temporary workers to junior staff who were not equipped to deal with them."

These junior staff, according to PPKS, had a standard response when temporary workers applied for permanent position: "The post that you are holding is temporary. Your application to have this post placed in the permanent category cannot be considered."

The proper procedure would have been to bring the matter to the attention of the Public Service Department (PSD) or Establishment Office (EO) to take the necessary steps to plug the loopholes in the service scheme.

The missing element in the equation, said Lim, was "the stroke of a pen" which would have resolved all anomalies faced by retirees in collecting their pensions.

Lim, however, is still hopeful that "resolving the anamolies can still be done" and cited a precedent when he was with the Sabah Medical Union.

He applied to the Federal Public Service Department to have about 2,500 IMG staff in the Health Department placed under the permanent category for the same posts they held.

This was approved in 1983 after two years. It benefitted IMG Open Vote workers such as gardeners, grass-cutters, supervisors, carpenters, handymen, spray-men, larvae collectors and outboard drivers, among others.

"If this can be done with the health department workers, it can be done with the state PWD workers," said Lim. "The power lies with those in authority. All it takes is a stroke of the pen."