KUALA LUMPUR: A windfall tax should be imposed on companies that made profit due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the money should be used to improve the welfare of contract doctors, says Muar MP Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman.

       “The government shouldn’t be afraid to impose a windfall tax on large companies that profited from the pandemic such as glove companies,” he said in Parliament on Monday (July 26).

       He said the current reality is that the pandemic has caused the rich to grow richer while the poor gets poor, adding that the pandemic is simultaneously an economic and health problem.

       He said the nation’s poverty rates have doubled as about 600,000 people have fallen into the cracks.

       He also said more than one million Malaysians are now jobless and 500,000 more are expected to lose their jobs in the next three months.

       “The average Malaysian salary has gone down by 17% but at the same time, the 50 richest people in Malaysia have increased their wealth by 14%,” he said.

       He also said the pandemic had long-term effects on education and criticised the government’s failure to deliver 150,000 laptops to students.

       Syed Saddiq said when the matter was brought up, the Finance and Education Ministries kept pushing the blame between each other.

       “It is not hard. It’s 150,000 laptops, how hard is that to coordinate?” he said.