M'SIA NEEDS 3.3 MILLION SKILLED WORKERS IN NEXT 10 YEARS

KUALA LUMPUR, May 27 (Bernama) -- Malaysia will require at least 3.3 million skilled workers in the next 10 years to meet the needs of industries in the country.

The Education Ministry's director of Technical and Vocational Education, Ahmad Tajudin Jab, said to meet this requirement, the ministry targeted the involvement of 160,000 or 20 per cent of vocational students in 2015 and 40 per cent in 2020.

"Till now, Malaysia has only reached five per cent involvement compared to 78 per cent in Austria," he said after the Vocational Education Transformation Gallery Walk briefing at Kuala Lumpur Sentral, here, Thursday.

Ahmad Tajudin said other countries in the region like Indonesia and Thailand had also surpassed Malaysia in this area with 40 to 60 per cent students choosing the vocational field.

"We also target to build 122 more public vocational schools from the 70 existing ones under the Vocational Education Transformation Plan, while there are 90 private vocational schools," he said.

Besides that, he said, the vocational secondary schools would also be known as vocational colleges for upper secondary students under the plan.

"To make this plan a success, we need the views and input from various quarters as a guideline in implementing the plan," he added.

The two-day Gallery Walk is to expose to interested parties the concept and direction of the plan and to get feeback and suggestions from them on enhancing vocational education in the country.
-- BERNAMA