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For decades, the message to Malaysian workers was the same: be patient, the economy is growing, your turn is coming.

The Consumers’ Association of Penang (CAP), a non-profit founded in 1969 and one of Malaysia’s most vocal advocates for consumer rights, public health and environmental protection, has a different read.

Your turn already came — you just didn’t get to keep it.

In a statement released this week, CAP president Mohideen Abdul Kader laid out what many Malaysians have quietly suspected but rarely seen written down in plain language: the country’s low-wage problem is not an accident.

It was, for a long time, the strategy — or so CAP argues.

The Maths Nobody Talks About

CAP’s argument rests heavily on Khazanah Research Institute (KRI) data — and if the numbers hold, the conclusions are hard to argue with.

According to KRI, Malaysian workers receive roughly 30 per cent of company income.

The remaining 70 per cent goes to business owners and capital holders.

In most developed economies, that ratio looks very different — workers in the United Kingdom receive about 49.8 per cent of income share, and in Germany, about 54.7 per cent.

Separately, CAP cited KRI research showing that nearly 40 per cent of experienced graduates struggle to find jobs that match their qualifications — suppressing their earning potential before their careers have properly begun.

Mohideen did not call this exploitation; he called it a structural weakness.

Does this distinction matter? You decide.

@ekonomirakyatmy

Kenapa Graduan Sukar Dapat Kerja? " Naratif yang kata gaji dekat Malaysia ini stagnant (tidak meningkat), tak betul. Tapi Isu underemployment (graduan sukar dapat kerja yang sepadan dengan kelayakan) itu memang betul "

♬ original sound – Ekonomi Rakyat

The Foreign Worker Deflection

When wages come up in Malaysia, foreign workers usually come up next — but Mohideen pushes back on that.

Foreign workers, he argues, are not the cause of low wages; they are a symptom of an economy that was built to keep labour cheap.

The problem, CAP argues, was not imported — it was designed here.

The same structural logic plays out further down the economy, in farming.

Farmers grow the food, but processors, wholesalers and retailers take the margin — the farmer stays poor while the supply chain stays profitable.

Thailand’s OTOP programme tackled this by helping rural communities process and sell their own products, keeping more value in their hands.

Malaysia has MARDI, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Fisheries — the research and technology exist — but Mohideen argues the gap between the pilot project and markets (pasar) has never been properly closed.

View on Threads

The Inflation Objection, Answered

The standard pushback to any wage conversation in Malaysia is inflation — pay workers more, prices go up, everyone loses.

Mohideen’s answer is precise: wage increases only cause inflation when they are not matched by productivity gains, and when workers are better trained and producing more, higher wages are supported by higher value, not just higher costs.

CAP points to South Korea, Germany and Singapore as proof — all three achieved high wages by investing in skills and higher-value industries, not by keeping labour cheap.

Mohideen is a consumer advocate, not a union organiser, and the statement is careful enough to stop well short of naming names.

But the arithmetic CAP cites is not subtle.

If workers received 30 per cent and capital received 70 per cent over a period when the economy grew substantially — someone collected the difference.

CAP did not say who, but the data points in one direction: the gains went to capital — to business owners, shareholders, and investors — not to the workers who generated them.

READ MORE: From RM2.5K To RM70K: A Paediatrician’s Journey Through The Trenches Of Medical Training

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