KUALA LUMPUR: There are almost 640,000 job opportunities available across the country, with some 150,000 jobs created this year, says Human Resources Minister M. Kulasegaran (pic).
He said the employment opportunities were not only limited to dangerous, dirty and difficult (3D) jobs, but also involved management, professional, technical and others.
“As I am speaking, currently there are more than 640,000 job openings available. Not just the 3D jobs, for example at the management level there more than 6,000; for professionals more than 21,000; as well as technical and associate professionals for more than 22,000.
“The biggest challenge for us is there are a lot of employment opportunities, but the youth are not willing to take these jobs,” he said in reply to a supplementary question from Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob (BN-Bera) during Question Time.
Ismail had asked the ministry to state whether the Pakatan Harapan government will be able to implement its election manifesto of creating one million job opportunities by the end of its five-year term.
Kulasegaran also noted that there were new sectors including the green economy, which is expected to generate more than 250,000 job opportunities.
“If we look within a period of a year, more than 150,000 jobs have already been created during the period,” he said.
He also revealed that a total of 23,168 individuals have been dismissed from their jobs in the private sector last year, involving 17,236 (74.4%) through normal dismissal, while 5,932 people were given the Voluntary Separation Scheme (VSS).
“Meanwhile, as of Sept 30 this year, a total of 24,600 individuals were involved.
“From the total, some 21,625 (87.9%) via retrenchment, while 2,975 (12.1%) were given VSS,” he told Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed (PH-Jeli), who asked the Ministry to state the amount of people who were dismissed in the private sector. -The Star