Politeknik Kuching appoints nine industrial advisors for 2017-2018 term
KUCHING: Politeknik Kuching has appointed nine industrial advisors for the 2017-2018 term.
According to Polytechnic Education Department’s industrial relations and marketability division director Tung Chee Kuan, the appointment served to provide inputs on how the polytechnic can move forward and equip its students with skills relevant to the needs of the industry.
The announcement was made during the Industry Advisory Committee ( IAC) meeting at the polytechnic here yesterday.
“We have Serba Dinamik Holdings Bhd director who is also appointed IAC chairperson, Dato Dr Mohd Abd Karim Abdullah, to share with us his experience in the industry,” Tung told reporters at the press conference held after the meeting.
Tung disclosed that through the IAC, there had been improvements on Politeknik Kuching’s employability rate, which reached 92 per cent last year.
In comparison, the national employability rate stands at 88.6 per cent. The same strategy is used in other polytechnics as well – each is said to have a Corporate, Industrial Services and Employment Centre (Cisec) that coordinates with industries that are looking for potential workfroce from the polytechnic.
Aside from that, Tung pointed out that the polytechnic also encourages graduates to become job creators through means like entrepreneurship, apart from them hunting for jobs.
Meanwhile, Mohd Abd Karim said that the problems faced by training institutions are the suitability and ability of their graduates.
Thus, he believed that the collaboration between the industry and the polytechnics could close such gap, adding that industry players would need to give their cooperation towards developing the nation together.
‘We need to draft a more aggressive programme so that more industry players could come in and give their support.”
On the same subject, Politeknik Kuching director Kamaludin Daud said the steps taken towards this include forging collaborations with industry players to gain information as to what should be incorporated in the polytechnic’s syllabus for the students.
“We hope the inputs from this (IAC) meeting could be applied into the teaching progammes for our students,” he said.