KUCHING: More than 400 employers nationwide yesterday offered 25,000 vacancies at the “Job Fair @ UTC 2.0 2017” held simultaneously at 11 Urban Transformation Centres (UTCs) and four JobsMalaysia Centres (JMCs) throughout Malaysia.
This was disclosed by Minister of Human Resources, Datuk Seri Richard Riot Jaem at a press conference after launching the Job Fair @ UTC 2.0 2017 programme at UTC Kuching at Jalan Bukit Mata here yesterday.
He added that in Sarawak alone, a total of 22 employers were offering 1,178 vacancies to job seekers.
In line with the desire of Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak to make JobsMalaysia a national employment hub, Riot said his ministry would hold “Job Fair @ 3.0 2017” in September.
“This programme allows job seekers to find employment appropriate for their qualifications and so far, I am very satisfied with the response from job seekers and employers who participate in the programme.
“The objective of this programme is to empower UTC as a hub of employment services by offering employment opportunities to all segments of society in line with the concept of National Blue Ocean Strategy (NBOS), namely, “High Impact Low Cost”.
“In addition, it also seeks to enhance the quality and delivery of employment services to the supply and demand parties and to reduce dependence on foreign workers,” explained Riot.
While replying to a question on the unemployment rate in the country, Riot said: “According to the definition of unemployment rate from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), any country which has an unemployment rate of less than four per cent is considered to have full employment.
“Malaysia is one of the countries with full employment as the current unemployment rate is 3.5 percent,” he answered.
To reduce the unemployment rate of graduates, Riot said the government had introduced the entrepreneurship syllabus in all institutions of higher learning in the country so that graduates would not only look for jobs based on their programmes but could also be involved in business.
“To be a developed country, at least 35 percent of our workforce must be skilled and as of 2015, the number of skilled workforce that we have in our country is only 28 percent.
“The government is targeting to have a 35 percent skilled workforce by the year 2020,” said Riot, adding that according to statistics, in Malaysia, there were a total of 180,000 unemployed graduates.
Among the activities held in conjunction with the Job Fair @ UTC 2.0 2017 were open interviews; registrations for jobs online, career talks and career clinics. Yesterday, Riot also launched the loan repayment counter for Skills Development Fund Corporation (PTPK) at UTC Kuching.
