Ahmad, Abidin and other employees of UCSF giving the thumbs up to Shafie for helping to resolve the university’s financial woes.
KOTA KINABALU: The employees of University College Sabah Foundation (UCSF) have expressed their utmost gratitude towards Chief Minister Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal’s for his intervention in their recent salary predicament.
On Wednesday, Shafie had instructed UCSF to revamp its management following the latter’s controversial decision to slash the salaries of its workers and retrench some of them.
Shafie had also ordered the financially troubled university owned by the Sabah Foundation, to retain its staff and to pay their salaries in full.
“We are very thankful for the Chief Minister’s concern in solving our issue in UCSF. We hope that the UCSF will promptly revamp its management, as what was instructed by him,” said Ahmad Omar Khan, who works as a UCSF marketing officer.
He represented some 164 employees who opposed the pay cut.
However, Ahmad revealed that they had yet to receive any word from the management since Shafie had made the announcement.
The employees hoped that the overhauling of the management would enable the university to reestablish itself and to once again stand on its own without solely relying on Sabah Foundation.
“We hope that the revamped management would improve the image of the university – so that we can regain the parents’ trust in our institution,” added Abidin Mohd Alam, a vocational training officer of UCSF.
Abidin also hoped that UCSF employees who had been retrenched would be called back to work.
UCSF was initially looking to slash staff salaries by half and possibly laying off hundreds as it struggled to deal with a sharp drop in student intake due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Its vice-chancellor, Dr Mohamed Haleem Mohamed Razi, said in the memo that these were part of cost-cutting measures in light of a plunge in intake for the April semester.
Under the cost-cutting scheme, staff will be subject to a 50-percent pay cut with working hours reduced to 20 per week.
The initial plan was that, if by September there has been no improvement in the university’s financial status, the number of active staff will be reduced to a minimum in order for it to stay afloat.
However, some of the employees claimed that they had never properly agreed to take the pay cut and that they were only informed about it after the decision had already been made.
The matter was brought to the Malaysian Trade Union Congress (MTUC) Sabah Division and it subsequently caught the attention of the Chief Minister.