‘Technology influences future job demands’

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Fadillah (front, eighth left) shows a cardboard cut-out of a cow, to symbolically hand over cattle for Aidiladha to this year’s recipients from Petra Jaya and Pending.

KUCHING:The rapid advancement in technology will inevitably shape the demands of the future workforce, says Works Minister Datuk Fadillah Yusof.

Malaysians, according to him, should start embracing these changes and guiding the children to choose their tertiary education based on future job prospects.

“Most of our present jobs now might be obsolete in the future. In the near future, we could see self‐driving cars or autonomous vehicles on the streets. This would no longer be (a scene) from a science fiction movie,” he spoke at the symbolic handover of cattle for Hari Raya Aidiladha to a number of recipients from the Petra Jaya parliamentary constituency and Pending state constituency yesterday.

Fadillah, who is Petra Jaya MP, cited taxi driver as being among the jobs that he mentioned earlier.

“In the future, the passengers might only need to link with the central control station for pick-ups and drop-offs.”

Adding on, Fadillah said autonomous vehicles should make moving around more efficient as a part of the whole ‘Intelligent Transport System’, which his ministry is now the secretariat.

The Malaysian Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) System, he added, is also controlled by computers at the central station – making it possible to have each train run without a driver or conductor.

“This is also why our MRT is classified as being ‘world-class’.”

On another note, Fadillah said Malaysia is also ranked number three in terms being IT and technology‐savvy, based on the number of smartphones owned by every Malaysian.

According to him, the data tabulated by a group of international researchers have shown that on average, a Malaysian owns at least two smartphones at one time.

Thus, he said with wide Internet coverage and connectivity, Malaysians should take advantage of such facilities and dive into the realm of the digital economy.

“If the interest in digital economy is further explored, Malaysians could use it to capitalise on the business or communications sector.”

On the giveaway of cattle yesterday, Fadillah said this year, at least 69 head of cattle would be distributed to various mosques, suraus and village safety and development committees (JKKKs).

“The distribution is on rotation basis – those who received the cattle last year would not be getting any this year due to limited number of livestock,” he said.