HR minister says domestic helpers MoU inking between Malaysia, Indonesia postponed to April 1

KUALA LUMPUR, March 15 — The long-awaited signing of the memorandum of understanding between Malaysia and Indonesia on domestic helpers will be expected to be done on April 1 in Jakarta, Human Resource (HR) Minister Datuk Seri Saravanan said today.

At a press conference in Parliament, he said that the inking that was supposed to be on Friday (March 18) was postponed due to the fact Indonesian President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) has expressed his interest to attend the event.

In conjunction to Jokowi’s interest, he said that an invitation will be sent to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob as the latter will be attending the Umno General Assembly this Friday.

“President Jokowi expressed his interest in attending the event and this means that we have to invite our prime minister. However, our prime minister has another event that was scheduled (on March 18), which is the Umno General Assembly (PAU 2021),” he said.

He also said that the HR ministry will be attending a convention in Geneva for a week to show the government’s commitment to eradicating forced labour.

On a separate matter, Saravanan has denied Muar MP Syed Saddiq Abdul Rahman’s claim that the ministry is still studying the enactment of RM1,500 minimum wage and said that it will be implemented in the near future.

In a letter addressed to Dewan Rakyat Speaker Tan Sri Azhar Azizan Harun, Syed Saddiq claimed that Saravanan has misled the Parliament by saying that the government has to review the decision on increasing the minimum wage.

Saravanan said that the government will implement it as soon as possible, but will exclude a few sectors such as tourism as the wounds of Covid-19 pandemic were still fresh.

Yesterday, English daily New Straits Times reported that the HR ministry will implement the new minimum wage of RM1,500 as soon as possible and not by the end of the year.

He said that it needed to be imposed as the country’s economic situation was seen to be improving since the government has eased the movement restrictions to cushion the impact of Covid-19.