PETALING JAYA: Employers are not obliged to disclose the actual salary when advertising job vacancies, human resources minister V Sivakumar said.
“Employers are only required to provide the salary range offered,” he said in a written parliamentary reply.
Sivakumar was responding to a question by Lim Lip Eng (PH-Kepong) on whether the government was planning to make it compulsory for employers to disclose exact salaries in job advertisements to ensure the rights of workers were protected.
The minister said such requirements only applied to those employing foreign workers and expatriates and vacancies posted on the MYFutureJobs employment portal.
In August, Lim urged the government to adopt policies for mandatory salary disclosure in job advertisements to help tackle the brain drain problem in Malaysia.
The DAP MP said firms that did not disclose salaries had contributed to the pervasiveness of the “lowballing culture”, which saw employers paying a lower salary to skilled workers.
The Malaysian Employers Federation had also said in August that wage transparency would restrict the remuneration a potential candidate applying for new jobs was entitled to receive.
Its president Syed Hussain Syed Husman said omitting pay scales from job advertisements enabled candidates to justify their salary expectations based on their experience and skill sets.
[FMT, 19 October 2023]