150,000 new jobs created

Kula: opportunities available at different employment levels

THERE are almost 640,000 job opportunities available across the country with some 150,000 created this year, says Human Resources Minister M. Kulasegaran.

He said the employment opportunities were not only limited to dangerous, dirty and difficult (3D) jobs but also involved management, professional and technical, among others.

“At the management level, there are more than 6,000 opportunities, for professional there are more than 21,000 while for technical and associate professionals there are more than 22,000.

“The biggest challenge for us is there is a lot of employment opportunities but the youths are not willing to take up these jobs,” he said in reply to a supplementary question from Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob (BN-Bera) during Question Time.

Ismail Sabri had asked the ministry to state whether the government would be able to implement its election manifesto of creating one million job opportunities by the end of its five-year term.

Kulasegaran added that there were new sectors, including the green economy, which were expected to generate more than 250,000 jobs.

“If we look within a period of one year, more than 150,000 jobs have already been created,” he said.

He also revealed that a total of 23,168 individuals in the private sector lost their jobs last year, with 17,236, or 74.4%, through normal retrenchment while 5,932 people via voluntary separation scheme (VSS).

“As of Sept 30 this year, a total of 24,600 individuals were involved, with 21,625 (87.9%) via retrenchment while 2,975 (12.1%) were through VSS,” he told Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed (PH-Jeli).

Mustapa had asked for the number of employees in the private sector who had lost their jobs.

The biggest challenge for us is there is a lot of employment opportunities but the youths are not willing to take up these jobs.

M. Kulasegaran