Sarawak Cuepacs chapter slams govt plan to cut civil service pensions

THE CONGRESS of the Unions of Employees in the Public and Civil Services (Cuepacs) has criticised the government’s plan to cut pensions for new civil servants while it continues giving politicians a litany of lucrative retirement perks.

Its Sarawak chapter said that these politicians who are elected or appointed to positions of power are getting the benefits despite the fact that there are those who hardly provide good service to the people.

Some politicians serve for only one term or get booted out by the voters for their poor performance, and yet the government continues giving them lucrative benefits while in service and after retirement.

In contrast, civil servants get little despite working for decades, said Sarawak Cuepacs chairman Omar Bahrein Unin, who described it as most unfair.

Any move by the government to cut pension for civil servants is an act of injustice if the same move does not apply to politicians, he said in a press statement.

He called on the government to reconsider its idea to cut the pension scheme for civil servants.

“There are many civil servants who had served for more than 30 years just to get minimum amount of retirement benefits,” he said.

“They had worked hard, served sincerely and dedicatedly, so they deserve to get the retirement benefits.

“Why cut the pension scheme to civil servants and still retain the litany of pensions and other retirement benefits for politicians?”

“There are politicians who hardly serve the rakyat,” he added. “There are some who only serve one term and yet get all sorts of retirement benefits and their pension.

Omar also pointed to politicians who lose elections after being voted out due to their poor performance and yet still get rewarded with benefits and pension.

“This is most unfair if the government cuts pension to civil servants and not politicians,” he said.

Omar said politicians are already getting high pay, plus lucrative allowances and all sorts of “perks” while in service.

Many civil servants work even harder than politicians for just minimum pay, he stressed.

Omar said if the government wants to save financial resources, it should look into reducing the huge amount of money dished out every month to politicians serving as state assembly representatives and MPs.

The move by the government to cut the pension scheme for civil servants to replace it with an Employees Provident Fund (EPF) scheme has been met with strong opposition from civil servants.

It was reported that starting this year, new hires for the Sarawak civil service will no

longer receive a monthly pension from the government upon retiring but will instead

contribute to the EPF retirement scheme.

State secretary Datuk Amar Mohamad Abu Bakar Marzuki explained that all new hires will

now come under the Contribution-Based Position (CBP) scheme.

Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Dr Zaliha Mustafa had revealed in the Dewan Rakyat on March 5 that review on the remuneration system cannot not be delayed any longer, considering that in 2023, pension expenditures amounted to RM32.01 billion and are expected to reach RM46.36 billion by 2030.

“The average projected increase in pension payments is nearly RM2 billion per year,” she said. However, the existing pension scheme for serving employees and retirees from the civil service remains in place.

It has been reported that the government has allocated RM31 billion for pension payments to retirees this year. – The Vibes, March 17, 2024