KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 7 — DAP’s Lim Guan Eng today urged the government to increase the monthly welfare aid and extend the loan moratorium by another six months to mitigate the effect of some one million unemployed Malaysians by the month’s end.
This was in response to Human Resources Minister Datuk Seri M. Saravanan’s remark yesterday on the rise of job seekers in the country, attributed to an additional 350,000 fresh graduates and 200,000 Malaysians returning from abroad.
Lim said the proposed economic shields to save jobs and livelihood would cost RM31.4 billion for the government.
“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.
“To save and pull the economy out of our current economic recession, the government’s financial focus should shift from controlling our debt levels and fiscal deficit, to borrowing more money.
“Borrowing RM31.4 billion to help the 1 million unemployed Malaysians may be costly but necessary to save Malaysian jobs, businesses and livelihood,” he said in a statement here.
Lim, who is former finance minister, then laid out the three economic shield measures he had proposed.
The first was the immediate implementation of the increase in monthly welfare aid from RM200 and 300 to RM1,000 as proposed by Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin costing RM12 billion.
Secondly, he suggested for a further extension of the moratorium of bank loan repayments by another six months when it expires on September 30, costing RM6.4 billion that will help eight million Malaysian individuals and companies.
The third, he said, was the work 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.
