KUALA LUMPUR: Forty former employees of Tamil Nesan which closed down in February today claimed that the Tamil daily had not made contributions to the Social Security Organisation (Socso) and Employees Provident Fund (EPF) since 2016.
While the employees were required to take pay cuts, the company failed to make contributions to Socso over a period of 39 months and to EPF for five months before it shut down on Feb 1, said a former senior photographer, M. Sundar.
“This can be regarded as a commercial crime because they (the former employer) duly deducted the salaries but did not make the contributions ... thus causing the Employment Insurance Scheme to lapse,“ he told reporters after lodging a report at the Gombak District Police headquarters here.
Their attempts to obtain an explanation from the former employer were futile and the employees were instead asked to deal with the company’s lawyers, he said.
“We urge the police to investigate and want our former employer to resolve the problem within a week or we will take further action,“ he said.
Meanwhile, former sub-editor D. Saraladevi said the employees were promised various forms of compensation during a discussion with the union in March.
“We were given an oral promise, without anything in black and white (official documents), of RM1.4 million in compensation to be paid out in nine monthly instalments to some 50 employees throughout the country, but nothing has happened so far,” she said.
Tamil Nesan former managing director Datuk Seri S. Vell Paari had, in January, confirmed that the newspaper which began publication on Sept 24, 1924, would shut down on Feb 1. — Bernama
