SUBANG JAYA: Malaysian Trades Union Congress' (MTUC) is expected to know its fate in one week, after the Selangor Registrar of Societies (RoS) has completed its probe into mismanagement complaints on the organisation.
MTUC president Datuk Abdul Halim Mansor said the message was relayed to him by the Selangor RoS after a meeting this morning.
"In the meeting, Selangor RoS director Nurul Azhar Husin had listened to our explanation regarding the allegations.
"He confirmed that MTUC has been temporarily suspended until a decision has been made in one week's time.
"However, we are still allowed to continue with our activities including representing workers in court and at various agencies," he said.
On Dec 20, RoS said it had opened an investigation paper into complaints of mismanagement against MTUC.
RoS said that it had issued MTUC a notice on Dec 18 under Section 13(2) of Societies Act 1966 which is the notice before the registration of a society is annulled.
MTUC was given 30 days from the date of the notice to respond as to why it should not be deregistered.
Abdul Halim said the MTUC was however prevented from holding meetings including general council meeting until the issue has been solved.
"MTUC is supposed to hold the general council meeting on Dec 29 but had to be postponed following RoS' investigation.
"Even after we get the result, it will take another 12 weeks before we can call for the meeting," he said.
He hoped that there would be a positive outcome, pointing out that MTUC was a important trade union representing half a million workers in the country.
"The worse outcome is MTUC being deregistered, but we hope that will not happen.
"MTUC has been recognised by the government as the representative of workers in Malaysia and is consulted by government on major changes in labour laws through the National Joint Labour Advisory Council.
"MTUC also represent labour at the International Labour Organisation conferences and meetings, we hope RoS will take that into consideration," he said.
Abdul Halim said during the meeting, RoS had also given several recommendations including appointing a second financial secretary.
"We have only one financial secretary currently, our financial secretary (Mohd Effendy Abdul Ghani) had tendered his resignation on Nov 9, due to that we are not able to issue cheques to pay utility bills as he is one of the signatories.
"We can only appoint a new one during the next general council meeting. Hence, we are looking at amending the congress constitution over the issue." he said.