Najib holds dialogue with representatives of women in workforce

PUTRAJAYA: Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak today met with representatives of women in the workforce at a dialogue session organised by Talent Corporation Malaysia (TalentCorp) here.
The meeting, held at the Bangunan Perdana Putra here was to enable the prime minister to listen to the opinions and views of representatives of women who returned to work under the Career Comeback programme.
According to a statement issued by TalentCorp, Najib met with senior representatives of various companies which implemented steps to retain and facilitate the involvement of more women in the workforce.
Among major corporations whose representatives were present were BASF Asia-Pacific Service Centre, CIMB Group, IBM Malaysia, IHS Global (Malaysia), Intel Malaysia, PwC Malaysia, Sunway Group and UEM Group.
The statement also said the government had carried out various initiatives to ensure more women in the workforce and achieve the target of women as decision makers.
The participation rate of women workers in Malaysia had increased from 46.8% in 2010 to 54.1% last year.
"Although this is less than the target of 55% set for 2015, the increase of 7.3% in female labour participation rate (FLPR) had resulted in an increase of 750,000 women in the workforce," said TalentCorp.
This is estimated to have contributed to an increase of 0.3% to the Gross Domestic Product each year.
However, TalentCorp stressed that Malaysia was on the right track to achieving the target of 30% women as decision makers in the private sector by year-end.
In the 2015 Budget, Najib announced the Career Comeback Programme to provide incentives to employers to take in and retain women who stopped working temporarily.
Under the programme, more than 200 professional women had returned to work last year. — Bernama