Yesterday’s posting stirs quite the bee’s nest. Thank you for all the feedback and views shared.
In this second part, the issue I want to bring up is on Malaysian@Work initiative. Under the Malaysians@Work initiative, graduates who secured a job after having been unemployed for more than a year will receive RM500 per month from the government for a duration of two years.
Employers will also receive a hiring incentive of up to RM300 per month for each new hire over two years. The idea behind it is to create jobs for the unemployed graduates. With this, the Malaysians@Work initiative is expected to create an additional 350,000 jobs for Malaysians and reduce foreign worker dependency by more than 130,000 and will cost the government RM6.5 billion over five years. That is a lot of money.
It’s typical of politicians or bosses that don’t have connected brain cells. Before solving a problem, we need to to a little bit of RCA. Root Cause Analysis, find out what caused the issue, not just any cause, we must find the root cause and then fix it.
Let’s dig a little why do we have so many unemployment in the country. Here’s a quote from MEF Salary Survey 2016:
“In order to enhance the employability of graduates, he stated that 90.3% of the respondent companies were of the view that it was important to improve the proficiency of English to increase the employability of graduates followed by developing soft skills, such as communication, problem solving and management skills (87%),” said Tan Sri Azman.
You guessed it right, it’s a skill issue. In this case, companies aren’t hiring our graduates due to communication skills issue. Apparently our graduates can’t speak nor write in English for shit.
God forbid they learn English in school, but ohhhh, they must have Khat and they are willing to fight tooth and nail till Jannah, to have Khat in the syllabus, even if it’s for just 3 pages of Khat studies in the textbook. Fight till Jannah for Khat, but for english…that’s kafir! That’s is stupidity indeed. Alright, I digress, my apologies, back to the topic at hand.
English is the language of business here in Malaysia. In 5-10 years time, it will probably be Mandarin because China as an economic super power is almost guaranteed now.We have no choice but to equip ourselves with English and our kids with both English and Mandarin. Get angry at DAP all you want but the future of SJK (C) and the Manadarin language is here to stay. We may end up having Mandaring language as one of the subject in Sekolah Kebangsaan. The ability to communicate with English and Mandarin speakers will be more important in the future. Here’s the 2018/2019 Critical Occupation List and Top Associated Skills from World Bank. Take a look at the skills needed for the positions. Notice the pattern? Good.
Secondly, in the 2018 paper “Graduate Work-Readiness in Malaysia: Challenges, Skills and Opportunities” by Dr. Noorziah Mohd Salleh et al., lecturer at the Faculty of Business and Management, UiTM (my alma mater). Dr Noorziah et al. wrote that while “low skill and low productivity work with tough working conditions and limited career development opportunities” are aplenty, these jobs do not appeal to graduates. “The low level of work-readiness among Malaysian graduates” is an issue that has yet to be resolved.
Ok the doctors in universities like to use hard to understand language. Let’s break it down. First, most work that is available are those with low skill, low productivity, tough working environment and with limited career growth. Basically it’s a tough job lah. Kerja susah, kerja kucing kurap dan susah nak naik pangkat, pastu gaji ciput. These types of jobs are not preferred by these graduates. And these jobs are filled with foreign workers.
This is what the government needs to tackle. Creation of high-skilled jobs. Not the creation of low level jobs that doesn’t give the satisfaction in the workers mind. I’m talking about job satisfaction, not monetary satisfaction. Take a look this statement by BNM in their report on the question of the workers paid fairly?
Evidence suggests that the lack of high-skilled job creation could have played an integral role in this. Between 2010 and 2017, the number of diploma and degree holders in the labour force increased by an average of 173,457 persons per annum, much higher than the net employment gains in high-skilled jobs of 98,514 persons per annum.
Apparently our economy are not generating enough high-skilled jobs to fulfil the demand of these graduates. Looks like the Good Doctor is right again. I still remember in the big hall of ITM back in 1999. I was among the people who are in the hall when Dr. Mahathir announced ITM will be given university status and the name changed to UiTM. In Dr. Mahathir’s speech, he mentioned that we have too many universities and we are producing way too many graduates who thinks they should be leaders. Dr. Mahathir said we may end up with too many ship captains without their ships and without their trusty sailors. It looks like this turned out to be true. We have way too many ship captains available and yet not enough ships in this economy now. And these captain wannabes want to be a captain and nothing else. Or, they can be sailors but with a captain’s salary, more on this soon.
These there are the problems causing the high unemployment among our youth. First, they can’t speak nor write in English. Second, we don’t have enough high-skilled jobs in the economy. I’ve been in the business of hiring youth the last 18 years, and I can confirm the above two facts are the truth. They are mostly Malays, we can’t deny that these are mostly Malays.
Don’t start telling me about many of our Malay brethren works delivering for foodpanda or Grabfood. These are high paying, low skills, low complexity jobs. Get that, kerja senang, gaji tinggi tapi takdak future. I have talked to numerous foodpanda and grab riders. They can get anywhere between RM750 to RM1250 weekly, yes weekly. They even told me, “I will do this for a few years to save enough money to (get married, buy a house, buy a car, etc) and then I quit. I don’t think this job has a future”. They know this is a dead end and low skilled job and yet they still do it because the pay is good. Low skills, no career growth and high pay. I have friends who quit their 9-5 job that have a decent pay but with tremendous career growth and yet quit and joined grab. They prefer big and quick money for a quick and easy job. Remember when I said our graduates don’t mind being sailors as long as they get paid like a captain? Yup, and did you recently hear someone, somewhere said the Malays are lazy? Kerja senang, nak duit banyak dan cepat. This also reminds me of the Marshmallow Experiment. Wants everything now and not later. Ah, I digress again. It’s not about the Rakyat, it’s about the 2020 budget and the government. We talk about the Rakyat in some other posts.
And since we are on the subject of grab and foodpanda, we have our Youth and Sports Minister, Syed Saddiq, working hard to bring in GoJek. It looks as if he’s giving Gojek preferential treatment with special meetings and some behind the scenes time. This is another short sighted views of the whole matter. We need to create high-skilled jobs, not more low skilled jobs. Our BNM reports said so Tuan Syed. Then he’s also meddling in this foodpanda vs the workers situation. If this is not paving gold plated red carpet for GoJek, I’m not sure what is. Here’s a new and young minister with a new face and no baggage of owing to corporations for money and whatnot, so don’t start going down the road of kowtow-ing to corporations lobbyist. Just be fair to all businesses, make it easier for businesses to thrive. Businesses thrives means more job creations. Ahhh, I digress again! The point is, high-skilled jobs, not low-skilled jobs. Got that Tuan Syed?
Back to the main point, the root cause are skill mismatch issues and not enough high-skilled jobs issue. It’s not a situation of our youth not getting enough salary or the employers not having enough money to employ these youth. It’s so typical of politicians, they think they can solve problems by throwing monies everywhere. And Syed Saddiq smiles and looked so proud and can see his mouth saying jobs, jobs, jobs. Let me tell you mr Dear Syed, this won’t solve the problems. Giving free money to the Rakyat and companies wont’s solve the root cause of the problems. As much as you hated BN last time or giving out free money in the form of BR1M, you are doing the same thing here.
My beef is the budget didn’t touch enough on creating more high-skilled jobs, working with universities to have better courses and produce better graduates that have good english communication skills. Let’s hope the longer term 12th Malaysia Plan will touch more on this and makes it the central theme.
So there you have it folks, two issues I have serious beef with. PART 1 on minimum wage, Part 2 on Malaysian@Work initiative. See you in the next budget.
Peace be unto all.
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