Gov't acting to create more competitive workers: Najib

KUALA LUMPUR: The government is implementing six actions to turn out a group of workers who are more competitive to mobilise the economy to a higher level.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak (pix) said the six actions encompassed numerous aspects including boosting skills and the income of the working group.
He said, for the first action, the government was transforming the mechanism of demand and supply of the Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET), specifically to meet the 60% need of TVET from 1.5 million new jobs by 2020.
"Among the government's latest move was the recognition of skills qualifications in public service schemes specifically for Malaysia Skills Diploma (DKM) and Malaysia Advanced Skills Diploma (DLKM) issued by the Skills Development Department," he said in his speech at the 2016 national level Worker's Day celebration here, today.
Secondly, Najib said the government was enriching skills training programmes to make them more relevant and integrated to turn out a more skilled manpower.
Najib said the government would also continue providing loan facilities to workers aspiring to boost their skills whether via up-skilling, re-skilling and multi-skilling programmes to support existing skills.
"Among the loan facilities provided is via the Skills Education Fund Corporation (PTK) at the rate of RM750 to RM24,000 depending on the programmes and training sector," he said.
Under the third action, he said, the government was improving the labour laws and industrial relations practices including Malaysia's participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) which gave bigger opportunities to local entrepreneurs and investors to explore new markets in 11 TPPA nations.
"TPPA does not only focus on the economic and trade aspects, in fact, it also has a chapter on labour which ensured any commercial and investment activity does not adversely affect the right and welfare of the workers," he said.
As for the fourth action, Najib said the government expected a fairer distribution of income between capital owners and workers following the adherence to the more comprehensive minimum wages, improvement in productivity and Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) and improvements in the salary of TVET graduates.
"The move is expected to contribute towards increasing the mid-monthly pay from RM1,575 in 2014 to RM2,500 in 2020," he said.
The fifth action, said Najib was empowering the social security network such as developing a simple consumer-friendly online application "i-Perkeso" (Social Security Organisation) to enable the worker to communicate directly with the agency.
In addition, the government was also mulling implementing the Employment Insurance System (SIP) to improve the workers' social protection and facilitate employers in conducting business, he said.
The sixth action was related to the Occupational Safety and Health Master Plan 2016-2020 which was a continuation to an earlier plan.
Najib said the implementation of the plan prior to this succeeded in bringing down the number of accidents from 49,598 cases in 2006 to 42,148 cases in 2014 while accidents involving death dropped to 4.21% from 7.24% in the same period.
The celebration was attended by 7,000 workers involving 300 contingents from government departments, the private sector and workers' unions which represented 14 million manpower in the country.
Also present were Human Resource Minister Datuk Seri Richard Riot, his deputy Datuk Seri Ismail Abdul Muttalib and Congress of Unions of Employees in the Public and Civil Services president Datuk Azih Muda. — Bernama