Salary of Malaysian Graduates: Is it the graduate's fault, or the employers?

The issue of Malaysian graduate's salary has been discussed for a long time.

Graduates will claim that their salaries are too low. Employers will claim that graduates are asking too much.

I remember my experience working for the first time as an executive aafter graduating in 2005. My salary then was less than RM2,000. Minus EPF and so on, I was left with about RM1,500.

It was a sufficient amount for me, but I was lucky. I lived in PJ with my parents, near the LRT. The office was also near an LRT station of the same line. I usually take the LRT to work. 

On days in which I need to meet my friends, do political work, and so on, I used my parents' car. It was just a matter of filling-up the petrol.

But not everyone was as lucky. I had a colleague who came from the kampung. He has to rent a room. His only choice of transport was public transportation at first. He had to send money back home. All his food had to come out of his own pocket. It was tough.

Today, a graduate's salary according to EduAdvisor / Job Street is around RM1,800-RM2,600. Not a lot of difference from when I first started work 10 years ago. 

However the cost of living today is a lot higher. A lot of graduates who are from less fortunate families or the middle class, rely heavily on PTPTN. They are only exempted from payment when they are unemployed. Even with a salary of RM1,500 they still need to pay their PTPTN loan.

If they are not living with a family, they still need to pay room/house rental.

Even if they are lucky enough to be able to gain employment near to a public transport, they will need at least a motorcycle. Women will still choose a car for safety reasons. To purchase a motorcycle or a car requires one to be in debt. Now, you can take a loan up to nine years! Even public transport fees have increased.

If you are not living with a family, food and drinks are entirely on you. Most of the retail items and services are affected by GST. The salary goes nowhere.

Among the reasons why our graduates' salary are low is because, in general, we depend on a low pay economic model. This is normal to developing nations like Malaysia, Korea, Taiwan and Singapore in 60s and 70s. That was our competitive advantage.

But today, the productivity and salary of those countries are way ahead of ours. Malaysia on the other hand is only capable of competing by bringing in millions of foreign workers which results in generally lower salary and pay for everyone in this country.

That is why Pakatan Harapan would like to lower our reliance on foreign workers, including their agents who are making exorbitant gains by bringing them in. We would like to raise the minimum pay to RM1,500 and provide incentives to profitable companies to raise the salaries of their employees. Small and medium sized enterprises will be assisted to achieve this target.

For PTPTN borrowers, we will immediate raise the rate of repayment only for those who has received a monthly salary of RM4,000. This is system is carried out in the United Kingdom. For the long term, we believe public higher education should be free.

We will also decrease reliance on private institutions especially the ones which are low in quality. The government must build more universities, teaching colleges as well as technical and vocational institutions.