The COVID-19 pandemic is disrupting many non-essential businesses all across Malaysia, including a particular Malaysia’s video game store chain that rhymes with “Baby’s Day Out”. And it seems that there’s a bit of kerfuffle going on behind the scenes, particularly from an HR’s standpoint.

According to a recent reveal via Twitter, the management behind the company is forcing its staff to take annual leave or get unpaid leave during the COVID-19 lockdown while working from home. The tip-off started with Danial Ashman’s Twitter post, who is a former employee of the store in question.

Sources close to Kakuchopurei has confirmed this, alongside other details.

• The company has its employees working from home during the MCO; keep in mind that said gaming store is mostly a brick and mortar setup.
• The internal memo above was made before the MCO; hence the date.
• Workers aren’t sure whether their employment is guaranteed after 14th April, the new closing date of the MCO.
• On the company’s work chat group, one of its employees asked if they will get paid leave, which led to the other staff asking why the company is not complying to government orders. The chat group was disbanded by top management. This was followed by the HR manager stating that the group chat was supposed to be “work-related” only and the staff was “exploiting” the chat.

• Danial Ahmad also pointed out via Twitter that the company has sent out official emails for its workers to sign an agreement to take unpaid leave during the lockdown period and not work as ground staff during then. However, the company promised the staff to return with an Employment Retention Program(ERP) benefits system by PERSEKO. This last part is not in writing as far as we know.

We have reached out to the Malaysian gaming store’s CEO to hear his side of the story. No official response has been sent at this time of writing. We do hope there’s a resolution to this tale; as much as we love having our games physically and delivered/collected on time, we still want the job status quo to remain stable.

Also, it’s illegal to not pay your employees during the MCO.

This story is still in development…