Govt wants more students to enrol in TVET institutions

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KUCHING: The state has targeted to achieve 90 to 95 per cent enrolment in its Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions by 2020 to remain on course in meeting its need for skilled workforce by 2030.

Assistant Minister in the Chief Minister’s Office (Promotion of Technical Education) Datu Len Talif Salleh said the government would also embark on building more TVET institutions and Centre for Technical Excellence (Centex) to meet the demand.

He pointed out that the state would need about 500,000 skilled and semi-skilled workers, in line with the expectation of Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy (SCORE) to attract investment of over RM300 billion in the next 15 years.

Currently, the state has 54 public and 35 private TVET institutions with a total capacity of 30,000 places.

They jointly produce about 11,000 certificate holders in various trades each year, which Len said was insufficient to meet the needs of the various industries by 2030.

“Enrolment in both public and private TVET institutions had increased from 69 per cent in 2011 to an average of 80 per cent in the last two years. This is a good development but it would still not be enough in terms of the number of graduates who would be absorbed into the workforce annually.

“Considering that we produce about 40,000 Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) school leavers annually, we still cannot produce enough to achieve our target of 500,000 skilled and semi-skilled workforce by 2030. It is in this sense that we need to build more TVET institutes and filling up available seats by 90 to 95 per cent annually,” he said in a press conference on Sarawak Bumiputera Trust Fund (Tegas) Youth Forum at Pullman Hotel here yesterday.

The Tegas chairman added that the state had plans to build TVET institutes in Lundu, Mukah and Lawas to increase enrolment capacity.

In a recent study, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas) estimated that by 2030, a total of 1.33 million new jobs would be created, of which more than 50 per cent or over 600,000 would require skilled or semi-skilled workers.

In this regard, Len said a study was being conducted by Tegas with the Manpower Development Unit of the Chief Minister’s Office on the effectiveness of all its programmes.

A previous study by Unimas would serve as a guideline on how the industries in SCORE could be developed, he added.

“As SCORE has begun to attract investors, we want to have a detailed study on other sectors as well, from plantation to marine-based among others. We need to study on all sectors of the economy so that we would be able to specifically address manpower shortage while also knowing how we can restructure our programmes to fit the demands and requirements of various industries,” he continued.

Len also said Tegas would act as coordinator on government collaboration with the industry players.