Equitable vs equal burden sharing in times of crisis

COMMENT | During this Covid-19 pandemic, many countries are on lockdown. In Malaysia, the movement control order (MCO) was extended by another two weeks, making it a full month.

The government has rolled out a number of stimulus packages, but it is still lacking in providing social protection to the most vulnerable segments in society.

The Malaysia Employers Federation (MEF) had asked the government to reduce their contributions to the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) to 5 percent, down from 12 percent to 13 percent and to temporarily exempt them from several taxes. MEF has said that these measures would prevent retrenchment and closure of businesses.

In relation to this issue, I was reflecting on what does burden-sharing mean in this context? Burden sharing is a term used in the context of refugees and environment to have shared responsibilities among member states to protect refugees in the foremost and environment in the latter. There are claims that employees should share the burden of the impact of Covid-19 on the economy with the government and employers.

But should it be equitable or equal? Equitable means it would be shared according to the capacity of each party. The stronger ones to shoulder more burden than the weaker ones. Equal means that all share the same amount of the burden.

What is the distribution of burden so far? The bulk of the burden seems to be on workers.