today lauded and expressed its full support of the government’s initiatives to re-energise the economy.
President Datuk Dr Syed Hussain Syed Husman said the efforts of various ministries have made unemployed graduates more marketable.
He noted the Finance Ministry’s financial support under the JaminKerja initiative and the Human Resources Ministry’s efforts in the form of training and retraining, upskilling and reskilling efforts by the Human Resource Development Corporation as well as various supports from its agencies Talent Corporation and the Social Security Organisation (Socso).
“We in MEF support all initiatives that the government is undertaking (in the spirit of) togetherness to build back our economy.
“We must appreciate and be grateful that the current government has done much for the businesses and the rakyat despite (having) limited resources due to the pandemic,” he said in a statement today.
According to Syed Hussain, the three JaminKerja initiatives — the JaminKerja Hiring Incentive, the Malaysia Short-Term Employment Programme (MySTEP) and Training and Skills Development Programmes — are targeted to create 600,000 jobs, with a total of 300,000 job placements to be made under the JaminKerja Hiring Incentives, 22,000 under the Training and Skills Development Programme, and 80,000 under MySTEP.
Five special task forces will be established to help achieve the targets, he noted.
Syed Hussain, who is also a member of the National Employment Council chaired by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob, said the economic recovery and various initiatives to create more job opportunities have already shown positive results with 42,166 people finding new employment and 1,200 jobs created up to January 2022.
He said it is important to maintain this momentum to ensure that the objective of having below four per cent unemployment is attained.
“Achieving four per cent and below unemployment is critical as by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) standards, any country with an unemployment rate of four per cent and below will be recognised as having full employment,” he added.
He also commended the Higher Education Ministry’s efforts to rebrand TVET (technical and vocational education and training) to be seen as mainstream education with a high rate of employability, thus giving more options to young Malaysians for their career progression.
Syed Hussain said the untiring efforts of the Special Task Force to Facilitate Business (PEMUDAH), headed by Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Economy) Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed, to improve various processes to facilitate businesses have also played a great part in rebuilding the economy following the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The government has done its share. We, the businesses, must do ours and the rakyat must abide strictly by the standard operating procedures and (practise) good hygiene to control the spread of COVID-19, especially the Omicron variant, to ensure our economic recovery efforts are fully on track,” he added.
