Make up your mind on minimum wage, Najib tells Harapan

Former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak is calling Pakatan Harapan out on its failure to deliver a high minimum wage.

Citing an article during his term as prime minister, he said that before taking power, (current Youth and Sports Minister) Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman had said it was impossible to live on monthly wages of RM1,500.

"But now the Prime Minister (Dr Mahathir Mohamad) is telling us all the tomyam shops will close if the minimum wage is increased to RM1,800 a month."

If this is the situation, it's easy to make a decision," said Najib.

"Just increase the minimum wage to RM1,600 or RM1,700."

Minimum wage has been adjusted by Harapan to RM1,100 a month, and the administration has promised to increase it to RM1,500 within five years of taking over, which would be in 2023.

When announcing Budget 2020, Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng said the minimum wage will be raised to RM1,200 starting in January 2020 but that would be limited to workers in major cities in the country.

Najib went on to tackle comments by Deputy Human Resources Minister Mahfuz Omar that a minimum wage of R1,800 for civil servants would necessarily be easy to achieve as the government needed to look at the big picture and impact on the overall economy.

"Previously they (Harapan) promised the moon and the stars. The story is different now."

"Mahfuz says that RM1,800 is going to affect the country. Would Mahfuz accept a salary of RM1,800 himself?" asked Najib.

This comes after Cuepacs president Adnan Mat on Thursday urged the government to fix a minimum pay of RM1,800 a month for civil servants because of the cost of living today which continued to go up.

Malaysia introduced its minimum wage policy in 2012 after the National Wages Consultative Council Act 2011 was passed by Parliament. For most of Najib's administration, it remained under RM1,000.

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