KUCHING: Sarawak Social Welfare Department (JKMS) hopes to train more children of their clients who received monthly welfare for the ‘Program Pembangunan Latihan Kemahiran dan Kerjaya’ (PLKK) next year, after an allocation by the state government.
Welfare, Community Wellbeing, Women, Family and Childhood Development Minister Datuk Seri Fatimah Abdullah explained that the programme provides training to the clients’ children right after the completion of their secondary education.
“The training programme is to ensure that the children can undergo skills training and get a job after the training period.
“They will be trained at the training centres with a good record of employability. Therefore, the department will look for the best training centres so that the training won’t be a waste,” she said.
Fatimah added that the state government had set aside another allocation for the training programme and had trained about 214 participants from 2017 up to September this year.
Among the programme’s strategic partners are the Centre of Technology Excellence (Centexs), AMAIDA Resources Sdn Bhd (Oil and Gas), Sarawak Skills Development Centre (PPKS), and SATT College.
“The main objective of this programme is not only to provide industrial training to the children of our clients, but also to ensure that they can help to provide income for the rest of the family.
“Once the client is financially stable to support their family, they will no longer need to depend on the welfare department assistance,” said Fatimah.
The programme was established by the department in 2018 as one of the initiatives to help their clients. The training started in Miri with about 100 children of the clients, and 44 of them succeeded in getting a job. The programme also received its approval from the state government in March this year.
Earlier, Fatimah witnessed the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Sarawak Social Welfare Department, which was represented by the department’s acting director Joni Nurudin, and Centre of Technology Excellence (Centexs), represented by its chief executive officer Syeed Mohd Hussein.
The department also exchanged an MoU with AMAIDA Resources Sdn Bhd, which was represented by its managing director Abang Shaharudin Abang Mansor.
Also present was Welfare, Community Wellbeing, Women, Family and Childhood Development Assistant Minister Rosey Yunus.
