Skilled labour shortage main concern of oil and gas companies

KOTA KINABALU: Lack of a skilled workforce is among the fastest growing concerns among oil and gas-linked companies in the past two years, said Minister of Education and Innovation Datuk Dr Yusof B. Yacob.

He said the oil and gas industry needed highly skilled Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) graduates with leadership qualities and a good command of English.

In this respect, Yusof said his ministry’s aspiration was to tackle the lack of technical knowledge and skilled workers for the oil and gas industry.

“One way to do this is by perhaps establishing centres of excellence or developing existing centres to be centres of excellence, which can help drive rapid, targeted improvements in the quality of training.

“Training centres need to harness such potential towards catalysing development of competent workforce through various upskilling and competency building programmes,” Yusof stated this in his speech, which was delivered by his Deputy Permanent Secretary Moira David at the Conference on Sabah Oil and Gas Skills Needs organised by Sabah Skills and Technology Centre (SSTC) here yesterday.

He said Sabah in the future would have no choice but to build the quality of its human capital to gain and retain its competitive advantage not only in Malaysia but also in the global marketplace.

“This will require for the industry and our human resource principles to evolve and our mindsets to change, making way for policies that will motivate and encourage talent to continually enhance their skills and thereby, their income.”

He said the pace of learning and innovation in Sabah were critical to economic success.

“Specialist skills shortages often emerge at short notice.

“The State Government, employers and training providers need to work together to fill these critical skills gaps.

“Companies need to build their organisational human capacity and capability by acquiring the latest knowledge, expertise and technology through continuous upskilling of their workforce in order to keep up with the oil and gas skills needs.”

Yusof added that the oil and gas industry and learning institutions must also work hand-in-hand in identifying training that suited the requirements.

Meanwhile, Petronas Carigali Sdn Bhd Sabah head, Mazri Mohd Ali, said the job opportunities in Petronas were huge in view of the company’s growth and expanding upstream business in Sabah.

Based on Petronas Carigali Sdn Bhd’s experience, he said technical non-executives comprised 60 per cent of the workforce in oil and gas, followed by technical executives (30 per cent), non-technical executives (seven per cent) and non-technical non-executives (three per cent).

He said the oil and gas industry was short of technical non-executives and technical executives.

However, Mazri pointed out that the job requirement was very demanding in the oil and gas industry, as employees must comply with safety requirements, willing to work at site, undergo continuous competency development and able to stretch own limits to deliver superior results.

Also present were SSTC chairman Datuk Seri Panglima Wong Khen Thau and Federation of Sabah Industries (FSI) president Datuk Chong Hon Len.