This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on June 10, 2024 - June 16, 2024

SOCIAL activist Kuan Chee Heng, better known as “Uncle Kentang (Malay for potato)” among the people he serves, probably had most people taking mental notes of two things he said at the International Social Well­being Conference 2024 (ISWC 2024) in Kuala Lumpur last week.

First being how “not cheap” decent aged care facilities in Kuala Lumpur cost “RM4,000 minimum” a month, with top-tier ones ranging from RM8,000 to RM15,000 a month. There are those costing RM1,500 a month but “don’t expect anything” on quality, Kuan said, calling for the building of more affordable aged care centres that also provide short-term breaks for children and relatives who are long-term caregivers.

“Old people [who] just want to live [and are] not even [hoping for] dignified living” are being abandoned at places like hospitals, with bogus next-of-kin contact details, leaving hospital staff with no choice but to call social services, said Kuan, who also related how paramedics are at times called just to change adult diapers that have gone unchanged “for months”.

One could hear a pin drop and there were gasps around the hall as Kuan related how “a cancer patient was left by [his or her] children in a Chinese cemetery to die”.

Actor and former journalist Fatimah Abu Bakar, who was a panellist at the same session, was reminded of Shohei Imamura’s 1983 Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or award-winning film The Ballad of Narayama — set in a rural Japanese village where everyone who reaches the age of 70 has to climb a nearby mountain to die — where some children take their aged parents for the final journey.

Relating how acting is “not kind to old people”, being an industry where “age and experience [pales] to youth and beauty”, Fatimah, who also coaches young actors, told the audience she is working past her retirement age because she can, does not want to be a burden to her children and feels the need to do so because “savings do not last very long” when one is living longer.

Describing the “double life” she led, Fatimah counts herself fortunate to have had a “day job” as a journalist where she accumulated savings with the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) while being able to live her passion “at night” in the film and arts scene, where many cohorts do not have retirement savings.

The National Film Development Corp Malaysia (Finas) has only recently made it mandatory for production houses to pay EPF contributions to artists, actors and behind-the-scenes crew members and workers — people who were found to be among those most vulnerable during the pandemic when live performances drew to a halt and production work was disrupted.

Ironically, it was during the period of prolonged lockdowns that many people around the world turned to television, film and music via the internet and streaming platforms to keep entertained while being confined mostly to their homes. Unfortunately, most local artistes do not benefit when films get a second or third life after the big screen via TV or streaming platforms — more so when their work is pirated online.

In a separate session at ISWC 2024, film producer, screenwriter, singer, songwriter and comedian Datuk Afdlin Shauki related how the children of the late Tan Sri P Ramlee — who was immensely popular across the Malay-speaking world in Southeast Asia in the 1950s and 1960s, even after his death in 1973 — do not earn royalties from their father’s films.

Afdlin says he continues to write songs because there are royalty payments from songs: “From my understanding, a lot of my friends in the States or the UK have royalty payments based on acting projects they have done in their lives, which come through to their next of kin and so on. We don’t have that in Malaysia. So a lot of the people in the industry will either become poor or even homeless because out of the 100%, only [a small percentage] will perhaps become a millionaire and really do well but the rest will be the M40 or B40 and be struggling. The government has taken big steps to make sure there is some protection for people in the entertainment industry [but more is needed]. It is a very scary place in the industry if you do not plan for your retirement …  the big fear is a lot of artists or celebrities would not be able to survive if they do not diversify into other things like entrepreneurship, selling things.”

He also related how his production house diversified into farming during the pandemic to earn income. “During the pandemic, I couldn’t do live shows …  so I studied what industry was working during that time in Malaysia and one industry that kept popping up was people growing vegetables. So, I bought myself a farm and started farming.”

But not all production houses or artists can afford to do this. That, he says, is also why it is important that production houses pay EPF contributions and to raise awareness on retirement planning among his cohorts, towards finding other sources of income to sustain livelihood while one pursues his or her passion in life.

Separately, efforts are reportedly underway, in a collaboration between the Ministry of Communications, Ministry of Human Resources and the Ministry of Finance, to have advertising fees channelled to Finas for the payment of EPF contributions to actors registered with the agency.

In February, chief statistician Datuk Seri Mohd Uzir Mahidin said a survey by the Department of Statistics Malaysia found that only 2.22% of production companies that hire child and youth actors in films and dramas pay EPF contributions. Making sure savings are made with the EPF from young with retirement in mind allows them to benefit from the power of compound interest.

At the ISWC2024, Datuk Hans Isaac — a former actor-producer-director who has chaired Finas and is currently chairman of the Malaysian Stadium Corp — spoke of the need to get more people in the so-called informal sectors, or gig workers who are not covered by the EPF, to benefit from it by making voluntary EPF contributions.

He related how he had come across aged actors, some of whom had worked with the late P Ramlee, “veteran actors who have given Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia some 50 years of their lives who are barely scraping by in life today due to the lack of old-age savings”. Hans says it is high time that gig workers who contribute to the creative entertainment industry “even the technical guy sitting back there [working on the sound and lighting system for the conference]” be given a leg-up into the country’s social protection system for old age.

He, for one, thinks EPF contributions should be made mandatory at some levels, perhaps in different contribution tiers, with legislative changes made to have EPF encompass more people: “I made 100 movies, directed films and took on a government post … policy has to change … The 20-year-old [gig worker or young lady making money off social media posts and having the time of her life] is not going to say ‘I’m going to put RM500 into the EPF today’. I’m sorry guys, if you do not force them to do it, it is not going to work … it doesn’t have to be 24% [11% employee and 13% employer], it can be a 12% or 8% basis.”

In a separate panel session on retirement uncertainty: life beyond different careers, former Malaysian professional tenpin bowling champion Datuk Shalin Zulkifli, who now heads the Malaysian Athlete Career and Education Secretariat at the National Sports Council (NSC), spoke on the need to get more national sportsmen and sportswomen to prepare for retirement while still in active training for competition, just as she did.

Shalin, 46 — who began bowling for Malaysia at the age of 13 and had won numerous gold medals in Malaysia and Southeast Asia before retiring from the national team in 2021 — has a degree in sports psychology and coaching. She encouraged fellow athletes to try sports administrative work and not just limit themselves to being a coach. “Most athletes, the first thing that pops up when they retire is to be a coach, which actually limits [their horizon],” she said, noting the need to study and be equipped so that their salary is at par with those of foreign coaches. “I tried so many different things because I wanted to give myself options … many athletes don’t think that way because, often, the focus is narrow, just on the next competition, games, Olympics and so on.”

In January, the Ministry of Youth and Sports announced that the monthly allowance for athletes under the Podium programme (for national elite athlete preparation) would be converted into a salary and raised to a minimum of RM1,500 a month. The 307 athletes and 86 para-athletes under the Podium programme will also receive contributions to the EPF [11% athlete and 13% NSC] and Social Security Organisation (Socso), in a move that would reportedly cost the NSC RM16 million a year.

Relating how work is being done to expand that to non-Podium programme athletes under the NSC, Shalin told the audience the recent changes are important because easily 90% of national athletes would not have sponsorships and can see large variances in salaries throughout their careers, depending on key performance indicators.

There is a need to be aware of what is going to happen eventually because everyone will have to retire because the human body can only take so much, she elaborated, noting also the need to eliminate the perceived stigma of preparing for retirement from competitive sports.

“Athletes are so used to regimented training times for competition, what time to eat, what time to train, that once you retire, many lose that sense of identity … It can be scary once you attend [non-related training classes] that some people might think you are going to retire and therefore cut you off [from sports training programmes] and things like that. So, we try to encourage athletes and show them what an hour of your time might help you prepare for your future.”

In today’s fast-changing technology-powered world, there is a need to make a conscious effort to equip oneself to remain a relevant part of the labour force for as long as the retirement kitty needs to be filled.

As clichéd as it sounds, there is truth in the words chosen by Indrajid Nurmukti, regional coordinator at the International Social Security Association Asia-Pacific, to close the retirement roundtable on stories of inspiration at ISWC2024: “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”

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