LETTER | Weathering the pandemic storm - with a little bit of help

LETTER | About ten years ago, my family set up a small factory in the Nilai industrial area to manufacture food flavouring products.

It was a small set up, an SME with about 40-odd workers and we were doing reasonably well.

Over the years, our workers remained loyal to us and we even introduced a profit-sharing scheme and since then, we did not lose a single worker.

Also, all our workers are locals from the surrounding area and we have been functioning smoothly as a family over the years.

Just before the Covid-19 hit, we had a very good year and rewarded all our employees well.

However, when the pandemic struck and the movement control orders were introduced, we did not think much of it and were confident things would resume normalcy soon enough.

Months passed and slowly but surely, our financial reserves began depleting and we were forced to introduce a 25 percent pay cut. Soon after that, things began to get worse and we increased the pay cuts to half.

Our workers were understanding and they all stayed with us and we were also very reluctant to let anyone go.

Unfortunately we were almost down to zero and were seriously contemplating throwing in the towel which meant leaving about 50 families without any income at all.

Thank God, at that time, the government dropped us a much-needed lifeline through their numerous aid programmes, especially those pertaining to SMEs.

That aid came at such a crucial time, it helped us weather the remainder of the storm without having to lay off anyone.

We made it with the help of assistance from the numerous packages offered by the government and today, we are slowly making good progress again.

I am not really sure who in particular I should thank for this assistance but would like to extend my personal gratitude to Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin.

I feel Muhyiddin personally understood the hardship we were facing and did all he could to assist us.

From the bottom of my heart, I want to say thank you from us here in Nilai to our prime minister.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.