Lifeline for struggling businesses and employees

PETALING JAYA: Various initiatives, financial assistance and facilities have been rolled out by the government to support struggling businesses under the Pakej Perlindungan Rakyat dan Pemulihan Ekonomi (Pemulih).

In his special address yesterday, Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said the government had spent a total of RM5.1bil so far to help employers to pay salaries to 2.7 million workers.

Following a positive response, the government has agreed to implement the Wage Subsidy Programme 4.0 by allocating RM3.8bil that is expected to benefit more than 2.5 million workers.

“The government will support up to 500 workers per employer, with assistance of RM600 per worker for a period of four months,” said Muhyiddin.

He said it would be for all sectors for a period of two months in the second phase of the National Recovery Plan (NRP) and subsequently another two months for sectors categorised as negative in the third phase of NRP.

“Besides that, there is no more wage limit to apply for the assistance under this scheme, meaning those earning more than RM4,000 are also eligible for assistance.”

He added that the government would automatically exempt payments of the HRD levy for two months among employers who were unable to operate during the lockdown.

Employers in new sectors under the expansion of the Human Resources Development Fund Act 2001 will be given a new levy extension until December this year.

The initiative is estimated to be worth RM425mil.

The government, said Muhyiddin, also agreed to extend the PenjayaKerjaya programme that was due to end in June, with several improvements.

This includes reducing the salary eligibility limit from RM1,500 to RM1,200 for the “Malaysianisation” programmme to give more incentives to employers to replace foreign workers with local workers.

The government had also allocated RM100mil loan facilities and financial assistance to artists, musicians, actors and production crew affected by the pandemic.

Aside from that, Muhyiddin said the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) would introduce a new withdrawal facility known as i-Citra.

Some 12.6 million EPF members will be allowed to withdraw RM5,000 with a fixed repayment sum of RM1,000 for five months, depending on the amount of money in their EPF savings.

“The implementation of i-Citra is expected to channel RM30bil to the people for their daily needs,” said Muhyiddin.

“Members can start applying for the withdrawal through the i-Citra portal at icitra.kwsp.gov.my from July 15, with the first payment expected to be credited into their accounts in August.

“This is a tough decision for the government as these are your retirement savings, hence the i-Citra solution is trying to find the middle ground between those who really need the money and those who don’t,” he noted.

According to Muhyiddin, some 250,000 people had been granted loan moratoriums from their banks under the Pemerkasa Plus package.

These individuals need only to pick either three months or reduce their annual repayments by 50% per month for a period of six months.

Aside from that, the Prime Minister also announced a six-month loan moratorium for all income groups for the next six months.

He highlighted that there would be no conditions or documents required in the application.

“There won’t be conditions such as a wage reduction, loss of job or documents that need to be submitted for the application,” Muhyiddin said.

He added that the loan moratorium would be offered to small and medium enterprises too, subject to review and approval by the banks.

Applications for the loan moratorium can be submitted starting July 7.