KUALA LUMPUR: The Social Security Organisation (Socso) will soon publish a list of companies which received compensation under the Wage Subsidy Programme (WSP) on their website.
Human Resources Minister Datuk Seri M. Saravanan said employees can check the list and lodge complaints if their employers, despite receiving government aid, were reneging on salaries and attempting to retrench them.
He said companies found doing this would be blacklisted from receiving further government aid.
"We will also cease giving them subsidies for the next month and will lodge a police report on the employer," the Tapah Member of Parliament told the Dewan Rakyat today.
Saravanan confirmed that the ministry had received complaints on companies not passing compensation on to their workers or were axing them, effectively breaching the terms of the subsidies or compensations.
He was responding to a question from M. Kulasegaran (DAP-Ipoh Barat) who asked whether there were mechanisms in place to correct this.
Saravanan was also asked whether he was aware of such circumstances, and why the government chose to subsidise employers instead of compensating employees directly.
Saravanan also denied that Sosco was late in compensating employers who signed up for the programmes due to delays in funds by the government.
"When the WSP and the Employment Retention Programme were announced, there were sufficient funds throughout the three projected months. But when the stimulus was extended and more people applied, there were some delays, but we overcame this problem in time," he said.
On whether it is possible for employers to get their compensation automatically after the ministry approves their first application instead of being made to reapply monthly, he said the additional clause was put in place to prevent abuse by employers.
He also said the government does not intend to extend the subsidy, but had set aside funds for the reskilling and upskilling of those affected by the pandemic, especially those in the tourism sector.
In April, the government had allocated RM13.5 billion out of its RM260 billion Prihatin Rakyat Economic Stimulus Package for the wage subsidy programme, which was aimed at staving off retrenchment due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
On June 5, an additional RM5.3 billion was allocated for the programme, which the government said had saved 2.2 million employees from retrenchment.