Capitalise On Strategic Alliance To Produce Skilled Workers - Muhyiddin

PUTRAJAYA, July 10 (Bernama) -- The government and the industry should enhance their strategic alliance to enable the development of skills training keep pace with technology and innovation advancement, said Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.

The deputy prime minister said the collaboration was necessary as only 25 per cent of the country's workforce was made up of highly-skilled workers while 75 per cent held only Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia certificate or lower qualifications.

Muhyiddin, who is also education minister, said he was confident that comprehensive and integrated efforts between the public and private sectors, and the community could enhance the effectiveness of human capital and highly-skilled workforce development.

"The cooperation between the public and private sectors will not only help improve skills quality, but also ensure that the trained manpower meets the industry needs," he said at the Skilled Workforce Premier Assembly 2012 at the Putrajaya International Convention Centre (PICC) here Tuesday night.

Muhyiddin said the country targeted to produce 35 per cent skilled labour by 2015 and 50 per cent by 2020, which would be comparable to developed countries such as Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea.

Emphasising the need for the country to shift from low value-added economy to high value-added economy, he said the transition should spur the economic growth and transform the manpower from low-wage, unskilled workers to high-wage, high-skilled workers.

"With the implementation of the National Key Economic Areas, more than RM1 trillion worth of new investments are expected to be generated and 3.3 million jobs created by 2020.

"About 60 per cent of the jobs will be in the high and medium-skilled categories which require creativity, specialisation, flexibility and higher productivity," he said.

Muhyiddin said the government through the national transformation policy outlined programmes that focused on short and long-term measures to upgrade manpower skills by focusing on the needs of the industry and driving productivity.

He also called the private sector to support and sponsor skills competitions.

Muhyiddin later handed over the national flag to the Malaysian contingent which would be taking part in the Asean Skills Competition in Jakarta from Nov 10 to 18 and launched the "Road to Leipzig Gold 2013" project in conjunction with Malaysia's participation in the World Skills Competition (WSC) in Leipzig, Germany from July 1 to 7.

-- BERNAMA