MTUC urges CM to intervene in non-payment of salaries
KOTA KINABALU: Some 57 staff of Sabah Animation and Creative Content Centre (SAC3), comprising 51 permanent staff and six contract employees, have been affected by late and non-payment of salary since September this year.
Their spokesperson, Marina binti Abd Ghanie, claimed that University College Sabah Foundation (UCSF), the implementing agency of SAC3, had been delaying disbursement of salary to the staff.
At a press conference yesterday, she said the salary for September was paid to 41 staff on October 12 and 18 staff on November 2.
For October and November, Marina said 51 of the staff had received their wages on December 3 and December 19 respectively, while six permanent staff had yet to be paid.
She said the six staff, whose salary was above RM5,000, had filed a report at Sabah Labour Department, Wisma Perkeso but to no avail as they were told this was beyond its jurisdiction.
Marina pointed out that all 57 staff at SAC3 had not received their salaries for the month of December either, even though other staff at UCSF had been paid on Wednesday.
She said a meeting was held between Sabah Economic Development and Investment Authority (Sedia), UCSF and SAC3 on November 30 to discuss outstanding claim from Sedia.
"Unfortunately, UCSF refused to pay the salaries to SAC3 staff even when Sedia wants to reimburse the RM1 million claim to UCSF in the first week of December this year," she said in a press conference here yesterday.
SAC3 is an initiative to develop an incubator centre for creative content development in Sabah. Under the 10th Malaysia Plan (10MP), an incubation centre for creative content development was designed and developed as one of the pioneering initiatives to embark on the new venture of creative industry.
SAC3 was originally put under Sabah Foundation College (KYS), now known as Sabah Foundation Technical College (KTYS), as the implementing agency and later was transferred 'log, stock and barrel' to UCSF as the new implementing agency on July 1, 2014.
The first phase of the project was completed successfully in 2015 and SAC3 has been granted another grant to implement the second phase of this initiative under 11MP.
Marina added that a proposal for SAC3 to be parked under the Human Capital Development Creative Industry Cluster, Institute for Development Studies (IDS) was first mooted in December 2016 and the transfer was supposed to be done on August 1 this year.
However, she said the transfer did not materialize due to the change of government in the recent general election.
Therefore, she said Sedia in the last meeting on November 30 this year had asked UCSF to return to status quo, meaning to say that UCSF was still the implementing agency of SAC3 and must be held responsible and handle all financial matters, including salary.
“UCSF refused to accept the fact that it is still the implementing agency of SAC3 and points out that it has transferred SAC3 to IDS.
“Sedia has prepared a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to be signed by UCSF as the service provider but until today the memorandum has not been signed as UCSF said it did not agree on some of the clauses.
“Its refusal to sign the MoU and also disagreement to pay the salary of SAC3 staff using the reimbursable claim from Sedia will further delay the disbursement of funding from Sedia.”
Marina said SAC3 had written notification and appeal letters to Sabah Foundation director Datuk Jamalul Kiram bin Zakaria twice in October and November to request his intervention and assistance to solve the problem.
“SAC3 has also appealed for support and assistance from the Minister of Education and Innovation Sabah to intervene and help us with the salary issues.
“The Ministry of Education and Innovation has issued a letter of appeal to transfer SAC3 from UCSF to the ministry but requested for UCSF to handle the financial matters until the centre is successfully transferred.”
Apart from salary issues, Marina said SAC3 staff were also affected by irregular payment of Employees Provident Fund (EPF) by UCSF.
She added that a lot of benefits had been slashed this year, including medical benefit, transport, teaching materials, Internet, security guard, cleaners and marketing materials.
At present, Marina said there were 204 students attending Sijil Kemahiran Malaysia (SKM) level 2 and 3 programme in animation, visual, film and video production.
“Despite no budget being allocated for marketing and other restrictions by UCSF, SAC3 still manages to operate and looks after the welfare of our students who are mostly sponsored by Sedia, State Economic Planning Unit (UPEN) and Sime Darby Foundation.
“SAC3 couldn’t even fulfill the sponsorship quota due to restrictions from UCSF in hostel, transport, food, allowances, marketing and classrooms, which limit our operational activities.
“Although SAC3 is facing problems with salary since September 2018, all staff still come to work as usual as we have a huge responsibility towards the students.”
She said SAC3 did not own any account and all funding and revenues went directly to UCSF centralized account.
Therefore, she said SAC3 could only do estimation based on payment vouchers from UPEN and figures from UCSF’s account department for Sime Darby Foundation sponsorship.
She said UCSF always claimed that SAC3 owed the former a lot of money and refused to sit down together to clarify the account matters.
She believed that the total revenue received this year as of November 23 was over RM3 million.
“Being permanent staff of Uni YS Sdn Bhd, we hope we can get a fair treatment from UCSF management with regard to our salary matters.
“We have tried to seek assistance from various sources but to no avail.
“We have families to feed and financial commitment to pay, but UCSF seems to be deliberately delaying our salary payment without guilty conscience.”
Meanwhile, the Malaysian Trades Union Congress (MTUC) Sabah division urged the Chief Minister cum Finance Minister Datuk Seri Panglima Shafie Apdal to intervene as soon as possible as the animation and creative content programme was one of the most wanted current and future jobs created for the young generation in Sabah.