Ipoh school cleaners cry foul over 8 months’ unpaid wages
They are owed RM139,250 after they were told to continue working by the Kinta Utara District Education Department after their company went broke.
PUTRAJAYA: Twenty cleaners from seven schools in Ipoh are hoping against hope that they will be paid the RM139,250 owed them in unpaid salaries since 2015.
Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) central committee member S Arutchelvan told FMT that the government was unable to provide a solution.
“The government has said it could not do anything to help us get the eight months’ salaries owed to each of the cleaners,” he said after meeting an education ministry official here.
Arutchelvan said the official had advised them to write to the Kinta Utara Education Department.
PSM central committee member Rani Rasiah said the cleaners had continued to work at the behest of the Kinta Utara District Education Department after their employer, Time Medi Enterprise, was declared bankrupt in July 2015.
“Time Medi ceased operation in October 2015, but the cleaners continued to work until the end of that year,” the political activist said.
PSM and the workers met and discussed the issue with the education ministry in September last year.
It was reported in March last year that 51 cleaners in schools were each owed nine months’ salary from April to December 2015.
But Rani said more than half of the workers had since opted to drop their case against the government because they had given up hope.
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PSM would help the workers to write to the Education Department for redress but he was not optimistic of getting a positive outcome.