Voon Shiak Ni
KUCHING: The government should emulate the success of the Pakatan Harapan-led Selangor government in creating about half of the total new jobs nationwide from 2014 to 2016.
In citing statistics from the Department of Statistics, PKR Women national vice president Voon Shiak Ni said the Selangor government had successfully created 305,300 new jobs from 2014 to 2016, which is nearly half of the country’s total employment increase in the same period. Additionally, she said employment in Selangor rose from 2,912,300 jobs in 2014 to 3,217,600 in 2016.
In stressing that more jobs would also be created for women, Voon said the engagement of women in Selangor’s workforce had also risen from 40.3 per cent of the state workforce in 2014 to 41.7 per cent in 2016.
In comparison, Voon said statistics from the Ministry of Education this year revealed that only 53 per cent of the 273,373 graduates in 2015 were employed within six months of graduation, while 24 per cent were unemployed .
“Therefore, if measures are not taken fast enough to cope with the problem of unemployment, it would definitely have a negative impact on the socio-economic development of the nation and it would lead to brain-drain as the young turn to seek for better job opportunities outside Malaysia.”
In Sarawak, Voon questioned if the state was any nearer to becoming a high-income society considering that Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy (SCORE) is expected to drive Sarawak towards a high-income economy by 2020 which is just less than three years away?
“SCORE is supposedly there to create abundant new job opportunities, sources of wealth, business prospects and to drive Sarawak towards a high-income economy by 2020 and create over a million jobs by 2030.
“As Selangor is in the spotlight now for creating 50 per cent of the new jobs nationwide from 2014 to 2016, we would like to know how SCORE fares in Sarawak in relation to the statistics of the new jobs created nationwide?
“Does the figures of new jobs lauded by SCORE reflect the figures of the availability of new jobs on the ground?”
In relation to the job seekers in Miri and those who are now jobless due to the decline in the oil and gas industry, Voon asked how much has been done by the government to cope with the unemployment rate in Miri.