Tuition, accommodation, food in ILP free
SANDAKAN: Human Resources Minister M. Kula Segaran suggested that the Industrial Training Institutes (ILP) in the country should hire more Chinese lecturers in order to attract more local Chinese students to pursue their studies at ILP.
He said the low percentage of Chinese students pursuing their studies at ILP should change.
“There are only a few Chinese students at ILP. I encourage ILP to start thinking big and differently; hire Chinese lecturers to encourage Chinese locals to come and study here. (Hire Chinese lecturers) so that ILP will be more relevant to the local Chinese youngsters,” he said after visiting ILP Sandakan at Mile 5 here, yesterday.
ILP Sandakan has 400 students and only three per cent of them are Chinese.
Kula said that in order to ensure that ILP in the country, particularly in Sandakan, offered courses that were “industry driven”’ he encouraged more Public Private Partnership (PPP) in which private industry players would collaborate with ILP so that ILP would be able to customise its courses to suit the current industries’ demands that were relevant and needed.
“I am asking Calvin Chong (Elopura assemblyman) to help get the private industry players to be in PPP with ILP, so that the private sector could get involved in advising the ILP in producing human resources that are well trained and needed by the industries.
“We need to find out what they (industries) want; what they want is what we want to produce,” he added.
Kula also encouraged more youths to study at ILP Sandakan as the institute, which could take up to 600 students, currently has 400 students.
He said a lot of locals were not aware that ILP required very minimal cost as its tuition fees, accommodation fees and food were all free.
“We encourage our youngsters in Sabah to study here. We want to produce human capitals that are well trained so that they will be well paid in the future; in ILP we can do that. So I hope that more Sabahans will choose to study in ILP because if Sabah produces its own sufficiently-trained locals, then Sabah does not need to import human resources from Peninsula Malaysia, and the local graduates also do not need to go out of Sabah to look for better paid jobs because they can be paid better in Sabah (with the skills that they have),” he explained.
On the visit, Kula said he visited ILP Sandakan to identify issues faced by the institute and how to assist it.
“I found out that it is short of lecturers here. It has 40 lecturers when it needed 60. I will try to get the ministry to do something to solve this,” he said.
Kula said in National Budget 2019, the government had given two specific initiatives related to ILP, which include companies (industry players) sponsoring ILP students could use the sponsorship amount to get a tax reduction, and companies could get a tax reduction when they purchased equipment or items for ILP.
On this, Kula reiterated that he hoped more private industry players would get involved with ILP to have a smart partnership with the institute.
Also present during Kula’s visit were Elopura assemblyman Calvin Chong Ket Kiun and the director of ILP Sandakan, Mohd Raris Mohamed Yusof.
Chong, when speaking to the press after Kula’s visit said he would try to get relevant industries to be involved with ILP through PPP, because he hoped ILP would only offer courses that were relevant to the people of Sandakan.
“We want to produce skilled workers who are needed in Sandakan. Otherwise they will just leave Sandakan and work elsewhere. That is why the main concern now is to link the private industry players to ILP, so that ILP would produce human resources with skills that they need in their industries. This will ensure that the graduates of ILP will stay and work in Sandakan, and with relevant and needed skills that they have, they could be better paid,” Chong said.