Malaysia's private sector minimum wage to be finalised soon

After seeing off the national contingent to the ASEAN Skills Competition 2018 at the KL International Airport, Human Resource Minister, M. Kulasegaran revealed to reporters that the private sector minimum wage will soon be finalised, Bernama reported.

He said the government would set a uniform starting salary for the private sector in the peninsula, Sabah and Sarawak.

“The Cabinet paper on the proposal has been submitted to the Cabinet. It will come up for deliberation soon, either this week or next week,” he added; noting that the National Wages Consultative Technical Committee had conducted studies and consulted trade unions, employers, NGOs and others.

On the ASEAN Skills Competition, Kulasegaran said Malaysia targeted to secure more gold medals in the competition scheduled for Aug 26 to Sept 4.

He said the 48-member Malaysian contingent of students of public and private skills training institutions and public and private institutions of higher learning would compete in 24 disciplines. "The Malaysian strength lies in hairdressing, cooking, welding and industrial automation, where the gold medals can be won," Kulasegaran said.

Skills Development Department director-general Nidzam Kamarulzaman, who is the chef de mission of the contingent, said Malaysia had drawn up a strategy to ensure excellent performance at the 2018 competition. “Our target is to bring back more than 10 gold medals. We expect stiff competition from the host country, Thailand,” he added.

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