PETALING JAYA: The projected one million unemployed Malaysians will require three economic shields costing RM31.4 billion, DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng (pix) said today.
With the unemployment rate at 4.9% or 773,200 in June 2020, Human Resources Minister Datuk Seri M. Saravanan said that as of September, the number of job seekers in the country could rise to one million.
“Saravanan attributed the increase of unemployed Malaysians to one million, to an additional 350,000 fresh graduates and 200,000 Malaysians returning from abroad,” he said in a statement.
“One million unemployed Malaysians would be the highest in history and requires immediate action by the government through increased borrowing of tens of billions of ringgit.”
DAP has proposed three economic shields costing RM31.4 billion. The first is the immediate implementation of the increase in monthly welfare aid from RM200-300 to RM1,000 as proposed by Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin costing RM12 billion, Lim said.
He suggested an extension of the moratorium of bank loan repayments by another six months when it expires on Sept 30, costing RM6.4 billion that will help eight million Malaysian individuals and companies.
Finance Minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Aziz said that the value of the loan moratorium is RM78.14 billion as at Aug 21, 2020. RM27.35 billion was utilised by 300,000 businesses while RM50.79 billion was utilised by 7.7 million Malaysian individuals.
Lim’s third suggestion is providing hiring incentives under Malaysia@Work of RM500 a month to employees and RM300 to employers to encourage them to hire local workers as proposed by Pakatan Harapan in the 2020 Budget.
“Expanding this scheme to cover 600,000 Malaysian workers and their employers would cost RM13 billion. This would also help the more than 500,000 youths who are unemployed, making up a large proportion of the 4.9% unemployment rate,” he added.
