Feigning illness, buying MC’s is common practice

This is costing employers RM2.9 billion in overtime payments.

KUALA LUMPUR: More than half the working population feign illness or buy Medical Certificates (MC) to stay away from work. And according to the Malaysian Employers Federation (MEF) this is costing employers RM2.9 billion annually.

The MEF says this is because of overtime payments to workers who are replacing those on medical leave.

JobStreet.com recently conducted a survey to see how prevalent is the issue of fake MC’s.

From the JobStreet.com survey, more than 57 per cent of employers claimed to have staff whom they felt pretended to be sick to obtain MC’s.

When employers were asked what actions would be taken if staff were found getting fake MC’s, employers said that they used warning letters, verbal warnings and poor performance appraisal as some common actions taken to deter this problem in their company.

Checking with the medical clinic to confirm that the staff was indeed sick is also a common method for HR departments to validate the authenticity of the MC.

The survey says the top three reasons to stay away from work are : no mood to work, feeling burnt-out and some even faked sickness to attend job interviews.

This is a sign that they are not motivated at their workplace and are being dishonest just to avoid coming to work.

Although the majority of the respondents in the survey said they would not fake sickness to get an MC, one in four said they would purchase fake MC’s if they were given an opportunity to.

Furthermore, they indicated that they were prepared to pay up to RM25 for a fake MC.

A total of 1,058 employers and 749 employees across various industries in Malaysia participated in this survey conducted in June 2014.