5,000 vacancies to be offered for graduates at fairs
BY SHAHANAAZ HABIB
KUALA LUMPUR: Job fairs will be held in all states to draw unemployed graduates into sectors that they shy away from.
Announcing this yesterday, Human Resources Minister Datuk Dr Fong Chan Onn said graduates tended to keep away from “3-D” jobs – those deemed “dangerous, dirty and demeaning.”
These included farming, direct sales, or working as factory supervisors or tourist guides.
The Government's programme,spread over a period of three months, will kick off in Terengganu next week.
At least 5,000 vacancies will be exhibited at each of the fairs, to be held at shopping centres and malls.
Dr Fong said that some graduates “think it is demeaning to walk about and go from house to house on direct sales.”
“But it is better to have a job than to be without one,” he told reporters at the Parliament lobby after chairing his post-Cabinet meeting.
Dr Fong pointed out that Malaysia needed two million foreign workers and yet there were all these local graduates who were unemployed.
He said that if the graduates found at least 10% of these foreign workers’ jobs suitable, then “we are solving a lot of problems.”
Dr Fong said there were jobs out there for enterprising graduates and they could also open flower shops, tuition centres or other little businesses.
There were a lot of opportunities in the services sector, he said, adding that in some countries graduates worked as tourist guides.
“Being a tourist guide is not bad. And don’t think that going from door to door is demeaning. We want the graduates to change their perception and look at this from a different perspective,”he said.
He said it was not that local graduates expected “cushy jobs with big fat salaries” once they got out of university.
“From the feedback we received, they lack self-confidence and language abilities. These are some of the things we can rectify,” he added.
The ministry, he said, wanted to expose the graduates and “open their minds” to the fact that there were many "non-traditional" areas that they could look at.
Dr Fong said he was not suggesting that graduates become labourers but only saying there were many jobs they could find which were in line with their qualifications and abilities.
There were 19,000 unemployed graduates who were active job seekers, he said.
He said representatives of companies and factories would be present at the job fairs to conduct walk-in interviews.
“We believe a few thousand job seekers will come to each fair,” he said.
Although the focus was on jobless graduates, Dr Fong said, non-graduates were also welcome to the fair.
On the government decision to open up the foreign labour market to many countries, he said this was to avoid overdomination by any one country.
“We also do not want to over-rely on any one country.”
He added that the decision was made after extensive deliberation and in view of the fact that many factories and smalland medium-sized industries had problems meeting export orders due to a shortage of labour.
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