PUTRAJAYA: Effective today, restaurants and hotels can no longer impose service charges on their customers if they did not possess collective agreements with their workers.
Domestic Trade, Cooperatives, and Consumerism Ministry secretary-general Datuk Seri Alias Ahmad said the new ruling would stand until there was a new policy on the unregulated charges.
The businesses, he said, were also now required to display signboards to inform consumers that they were imposing the charges.
He said the move was made following the high number of complaints from consumers, and the ministry had already formed a working committee with the Finance and Human Resource Ministries to formulate a new policy on the matter.
"There have been restrictions in governing service charges because there was no specific act to regulate it," he said during a press conference on the Goods and Services Tax (GST) at the Finance Ministry building here, this afternoon.
He said the premises which failed to comply with the new ruling would be investigated under the Price Control and Anti-Profiteering Act 2011 provided a fine of up to RM100,000 and three years prison, and the Consumer Protection Act 1999 (CPA), among others.
