TNB Chairman says he is not earning RM1 million a month. Here’s what we know

There’s been a lot of rumours going around saying that the current Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) Chairman, Datuk Seri Mahdzir Khalid, makes almost RM1 million a month. This spread fast most likely due to the public backlash over high electricity bills recently.

However after doing a bit of digging through some sources, we learnt how much each member of TNB’s top management gets paid, through figures from the TNB Corporate Governance Report 2019. Although it isn’t the current year’s report, it will likely be at the same level as Mahdzir who was only appointed recently.

TNB 2019 report findings

Mahdzir Khalid stated in a Facebook post that his pay “is actually a lot lower than what was said”. While he didn’t disclose the exact amount, he might be right if you match it to last year’s report.

Based on the information provided by TNB, the former Chairman, Tan Sri Leo Moggie received a total of RM876,790 in the year 2019. Using this as a reference, it’s safe to say that Mahdzir Khalid also earns around this amount.

The amount is lower than the President and CEO Datuk Seri Amir Hamzah Azizan, who got paid RM 1.69 million in 2019. None of these remunerations, as large as they seem to be, are nowhere near as close to the “RM1 million a month” allegation.

Is there truth to the RM1 million a month rumour?

Here are the details for each director’s remuneration in the 2018 report.

Compared to last year’s total, the remuneration for the CEO in 2018, Datuk Seri Ir. Azman Mohd, was a whopping RM11.5 million—a staggering RM9.8 million difference. This means his average monthly remuneration is RM958,288.

The 2018 report also had info that there is a fixed RM30,000 per month salary for the Chairman, excluding allowances and other benefits.

Chairman Leo Moggie’s total remuneration for the year was RM883,039, which makes his average monthly remuneration about RM73,586. Based on these findings, there’s no data to suggest that a Chairman would get anything remotely close to RM1 million a month. The closest to that amount is the CEO’s pay in 2018.

CEO Azman’s earnings largely consisted of emoluments which amounted to RM8.69 million against an annual salary of RM2.76 million. He was replaced by Datuk Seri Amir Hamzah Azizan who became CEO on 2nd April 2019.

It appears that after the change of administration in 2018, many GLC heads were replaced with new salary schemes, which explains the drastic change in remuneration for CEOs. Pakatan Harapan, which came into power in May last year, had warned that exorbitant salaries for Government Linked Companies (GLCs) will not be tolerated.

Former Prime Minister Najib Razak has also pointed out the inaccuracy of the claims made online and he also highlighted that viral RM11,499,461 per annum figure is from the total remuneration received by the CEO of TNB in 2018, and not the current TNB chairman.

While it is frustrating to get an electric bill much higher than we expected, it’s important that we try to understand why it was high in the first place. Is it really due to increased consumption? Or was there a billing error? The TNB chairman has recently shared that he is aware of the concerns and anxiety of consumers, and the utility company is reviewing its mechanism. It’s also important to check the facts before spreading any news you find on social media.

[ SOURCE, IMAGE SOURCE ]

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