PUBLIC hospital cleaners, who are from the bottom 40 (B40) group, have been earning minimum wage for 25 years since the government hived off their jobs to private contractors. 

They now want to be brought back as part of the civil service and be paid by the government, as they have little hope of improving their lives under the outsourcing arrangement, their union representative Roziah Mohammed Hashim said.

The chair of the National Union of Workers in Hospital Support and Allied Services (NUWHSAS) said abolishing the contract system is one of their demands to Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin, whom they hope to meet tomorrow.

A convoy of union members is currently on a journey by motorcycle from Penang to Putrajaya for this purpose and to raise public awareness along the way.

Roziah told The Malaysian Insight the union’s 50,000 members want to be treated as permanent government staff. 

The contract system was introduced on February 1, 1997, and public hospital cleaners have been paid minimum wage ever since. The amount was set by a National Wage Council and through a collective agreement, and later, by the government under the Minimum Wage Order 2012 when it came into force in 2013. 

The current minimum wage from 2020 is RM1,200.

Prior to the contract system, cleaners could get government loans and be entitled to the government pension scheme, Roziah said. 

“For the past 25 years we have been earning minimum wage.

“With the current economy, there isn’t much we can do on minimum wage as the cost of living is constantly increasing. 

“And we are all from the lowest tier of the B40 category. We need help,” she said.

The bulk of the union’s members are Indian at 55%, Malays make up 35% and Chinese 10%. 

From a gender and poverty perspective, the Women’s Aid Organisation has said that 85% of the 50,000 public hospital cleaners are women from the B40 community, and who are sole breadwinners and single mothers.

Loss of benefits

In a table of comparisons provided by Roziah, the outsourcing of public hospital cleaning work shows workers losing benefits such as allowances for transport, shift work, extra work and funeral payouts, compared with before 1997.

They also lost access to panel dental services, had their annual medical panel benefit slashed from RM1,000 to RM200, and also lost the “children education gift” benefit. 

They gained, however, in terms of entitlement to one more day of federal public holidays, and four more days of annual leave. 

Union members on 25 motorcycles began their journey from the Bukit Mertajam Hospital in Penang yesterday and will spend four days covering 530km until they reach Putrajaya tomorrow.  

Roziah said more are expected to join along the journey, and the group will make stops outside government hospitals to highlight their campaign to the public. 

Roziah said unlike before, private contractors did not provide adequate training for new cleaners. 

“Back then new cleaners were given training but nowadays, supervisors expect new recruits to learn from the experienced cleaners,” she said. 

Hospital cleaners want to be recognised as healthcare frontliners too, she added, given their exposure to health risks, especially during the Covid-19 epidemic. 

Because they are employed by the private sector, they were not given the government’s special allowance of RM600 for each frontliner during the pandemic. 

NUWHSAS has said it sent five memorandums on the cleaners’ plight to the Health Ministry since 2015, but no action has been taken. 

Last year, the union was embroiled in a legal battle with contractor UEM Edgenta Bhd over “union-busting” claims and other alleged unfair treatment of hospital cleaners and support staff, such as changing of shifts and working hours without workers’ consent.

The company denied the accusations, saying some decisions concerning workers were made as internal business matters and in accordance with laws governing private sector employment.

Besides abolishing the contract system, Roziah said the union also wants the Health Ministry to increase their wages to RM 1,500 and also stop harassment by contractors on the union. 

“Supervisors constantly threaten the union members with sacking, although no one has been sacked yet,” she said. 

The debate on raising the minimum wage is in the spotlight again, following Human Resources Minister M. Saravanan’s recent comments that the cabinet was in the midst of finalising an increase to RM1,500 by the end of this year. 

The Malaysian Employers Federation has rejected the plan, saying it would hurt businesses still reeling from the Covid-19 pandemic, besides causing more money to leave the country through remittances by foreign workers.

After the Minimum Wage Order came into force in 2013, the minimum wage was set at RM900 per month (RM4.33 per hour) for the peninsula and RM800 for Sabah and Sarawak.

It was raised to RM1,000 per month in 2016, and saw further increments in 2019, and in 2020 to the present RM1,200. – February 7, 2022.