NUBE dispatched an urgent request to the Malaysian Commercial Banks’ Association (MCBA) to approve an extension of the moratorium for three more months (OCTOBER TO DECEMBER 2020) for the repayment of housing, vehicle and personal loans for ALL NUBE MEMBERS.
In his letter to MCBA, NUBE General Secretary Bro J. Solomon pointed out that the end of the six month moratorium on 30 Sept 2020, will bring more hardship to NUBE members as they will be forced to resume servicing their loans, despite having serious financial problems due to the economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Bro Solomon said all NUBE members are in the lowest wage cadre, have remained among the most adversely affected by the economic downturn in the country.
“Many of them have family members who were either retrenched or had their salaries cut, thereby forcing them to live under great financial strain and duress over the past six months,” he said in his letter to the Executive Director of MCBA, Mr Y.Y. Lam.
Despite the hardships, Bro Solomon said, NUBE members have continued to discharge their responsibilities diligently to ensure bank operations across the country were not disrupted even as the country was, until recently, under virtual lockdown.
Bro Solomon said the MCBA should also appreciate that, despite several Covid-19 cases detected in certain branches, NUBE members remained on the frontline in helping banks to ensure their operations were intact and accessible to the public.
As such, he urged MCBA step up to help ease the financial woes of NUBE members by offering them a further three-month blanket moratorium on loan payments, from October to December 2020.
The extension will help mitigate the financial problems faced by NUBE members and their families who are in dire need of support to cope with the harsh economic realities.
Bro Solomon also stressed that there should not be any accrued or compound interest charged to borrowers benefiting from the extension of the repayment moratorium.
He said the NUBE proposal will not result in any impairment as NUBE is merely requesting that banks defer the payment of loans, not forgo them altogether.
“An automatic extension for NUBE members will provide the cushion and peace of mind desperately needed by bank employees as they try to survive in an economically challenging environment,” Bro Solomon told MCBA
Bro Solomon expressed confidence that MCBA would not shirk from its moral responsibility in helping bank employees who were hard hit by the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic.