37,699 workers terminated in 2016

The Human Resources Ministry said the majority of the terminations reported to the Labour Department (JTK) involved local workers (32,552 workers) or 86.3 per cent while 13.7 per cent or 5,147 were foreign workers.

"The termination of workers last year was actually much lower compared to 2015," said the ministry in a reply on Thursday when referring to reports quoting the Malaysian Employers Federation (MEF) as saying that more workers would lose their jobs this year.

In 2015, 44,343 workers were affected, whereby, 19,891 workers (44.9 per cent) were through VSS and 24,452 workers (55.1 per cent) via normal termination process.

The ministry said the highest termination last year was in the manufacturing sector, namely, 45.9 per cent, followed by the wholesale and retail sectors (20.7 per cent); Finance and Insurance (12.1 per cent) and Mining and Quarrying (6.6 per cent).

"This was different from the termination in 2015 which was dominated by the Financial and Insurance sectors (39.8 per cent); followed by manufacturing (20.8 per cent) and Transportation and Storage sectors (14.7 per cent) followed by the issue of workers' termination by MAS," it said.

The ministry said it was compulsory for employers to inform JTK a month ahead if they wanted to terminate their workers.

According to the ministry, normally workers were terminated due to closure, excess workers due to restructuring, reduction in output, merger of companies, technological changes and takeover.