About 50,000 cleaners of the government hospitals and clinics nationwide are at risk of being exploited and having their rights denied due to the fixed-term contract system which does not guarantee job security, according to Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM).

Party deputy chairperson M Sarasvathy revealed that contracts of the cleaning service for the hospital have been given to five concessionaire companies, where four of them are under UEM Group Bhd, UEM Edgenta Group, as well as Khazanah Nasional Bhd.

"These companies outsource the cleaning services to sub-contractors for two years. This causes the sub-contractors to offer a work contract for periods of six months, a year and two years to the workers.

"It is clear that the nature of the job is a permanent employment but the concessionaire companies have 'dressed up' the job as a seasonal job," she said in a press conference at the PSM office in Brickfields, Kuala Lumpur, today.

As a result, Sarasvathy said, when the employer changes every two years, the workers are denied from their employment rights such as yearly bonus, annual leave, salary increment, employee's termination layoff benefits - and they cannot apply for loans as they are contract workers.

"Each time they get a new employer, they are considered as new workers. There are cleaners who have worked for more than 20 years and their salaries are stuck at RM1,000 and they have been given only eight-day annual leaves.

"They cannot apply for housing, car and personal loans to fund their children's education," she said, describing what these workers are going through as "modern slavery".

PSM urged the Pakatan Harapan government, government-linked companies (GLCs) and government-linked investment companies (GLICs) to immediately abolish the fixed-term contract system in the support service sector of the government hospitals and make the cleaners as permanent employees, directly under the principal employer.

Sarasvathy said the government must ensure that fixed-term contracts under Section 11 of the Employment Act 1955 are not abused by certain parties.