IMPRESSIVE: Fatimah, BPIEF chairman Dorge Rajah and See Hua Marketing area manager Wong Sing Seng (right) admire a portrait on display at a participating booth of Alvin Leong Academy of Photography. l See Page 14 for another story and more photos
KUCHING: The state is intensifying efforts to help the nation achieve its target of having 48 per cent highly skilled workforce to meet to the economic needs of the country’s developed nation status and high-income society by 2020.
With only 25 per cent highly skilled workers to date, the additional 23 per cent increase in eight years time is very much needed considering that the state is focusing intensively on meeting the workforce needed by Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy (Score).
“One of the government’s main avenues in producing highly skilled workforce is through its education transformation in vocational and technical studies.
“To meet the developed nation status and produce workforce that meet the needs of a high income economy, the country needed to emphasis on producing highly educated, skilled, creative and innovative human capital.
“Malaysia only has 25 per cent highly skilled workforce when compared to Taiwan (33 per cent), South Korea (36 per cent) and Singapore, 49 per cent,” said Welfare, Women and Family Development Minister Datuk Fatimah Abdullah when officiating at the opening of the 2012 Borneo Post International Education Fair (BPIEF) at the Borneo Convention Centre Kuching (BCCK) here yesterday.
Also present at the ceremony was BPIEF chairman Dorge Rajah, KTS Group human resource development and planning manager Adeline Lau, who is also BPIEF advisor, and See Hua Marketing area manager Wong Sing Seng.
Fatimah, who is also BPIEF patron and Dalat assemblywoman, added that the main challenge now is to produce sufficient workforce for SCORE. By the year 2015, SCORE is expected to create some 290,880 jobs that would increase to 662,065 jobs by 2020.
In 2025, a total of 956,455 job openings would be available in the SCORE area and this figure would jump to a whopping 1,334,475 job vacancies by the year 2030.
“To meet to this challenge, we need to change public perception into absorbing the idea of having a career in the skilled sectors. School leavers and higher learning institute students should take technical education as their main subject in the certificate entry level, diploma or even degree studies,” she suggested.
Fatimah highlighted that good technical studies and vocational system would enable the country to produce a quality human resource development that inadvertently will propel the country in a high-income society.
She mentioned that student enrolment (between ages of 16 and 19) in apprenticeship in countries such as Germany was 74.8 per cent while Sweden recorded 47 per cent.
A Unesco (United Nation Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) study in 1999 in regards to ‘Enrolment in Vocational Education as a Proportion of Total Enrolments in Secondary Education in Asia’ revealed that countries such as South Korea has 20.6 per cent enrolment, Papua New Guinea 16.6 per cent, Thailand 15.5 per cent and Malaysia a mere 1.7 per cent.
Fatimah, who deemed the percentage as way too low, had stated that the main challenge for the state now was to change the perception of youths on technical education where it could become the main choice for students when pursuing their studies.
“The old mindset of parents was to encourage their children into pursuing government jobs. However, the civil service sector is limited when compared to the vast opportunity available when the state focuses on industrial development.
“That’s why the state emphasises on SCORE as it needs to diversify its job opportunities,” she advised.
Fatimah also urged parents, school principals and the Education Department to encourage students who are inclined to study in a ‘hands-on’ approach to take on vocational training in schools or higher learning institutes.