GRADUATES FULFILLING MARKET NEEDS CRUCIAL IN DETERMINING NATIONAL CAPACITY: M'SIAN PM

PUTRAJAYA, June 1 (Bernama) -- Graduates who fulfill market requirements
form an important element in determining the country's ability to attract
foreign direct investment (FDI) and drive the growth of new domestic resources,
said Najib Razak.

Thus, the Prime Minister said the government, through the Ministry of Higher
Education, was implementing long-term measures to raise the quality and
marketability of graduands in the country.

"The measures include making graduate employability as the Key Performance
Indicator (KPI) for each public university vice-chancellor, introducing
entrepreneurship curriculum, implementing soft skills programmes and student
internship programmes in public and private corporations before the students
graduate.

"Continuous dialogues between the universities and industry are also held to
raise the quality of graduands. This approach is also expected to reduce the
mismatch between the supply and demand for skilled manpower," he said when
launching the 1Malaysia Training Scheme (SL1M), here Wednesday.

Najib said that in addition, the government was also implementing special
programmes as short-term measures to raise graduate employabality, among them
was the training programme carried out by the Higher Education Ministry, Bank
Negara Malaysia (BNM-Malaysia's central bank), Khazanah and the Skills
Development Fund Corporation to provide training opportunities to 12,000
graduands.

He said this meant that out of the 20,000 unemployed graduates, 8,000 did
not have the opportunity to undergo additional training to improve their
marketability.

"Some of them come from the rural and interior areas as well as from
low-income families. This background influences their character and
self-confidence and affects their ability to secure employment," he said.

Thus, Najib said that by carrying out a last mile intervention in the form
of finishing schools, they would become more confident, and they would also be
the target group for SL1M.

"This approach has been proven to be effective when Bank Negara, through the
short training programme given to 500 graduands had enabled all of these
graduands to find suitable jobs," he said.

Najib said in this context, the SL1M programme should be expanded and made
part of the corporate social responsibility of government-linked corporations
(GLCs) and major companies.

"The SL1M programme is targeted at graduates who fail to get employment six
months after receiving their degrees. Working graduates whose jobs are not
commensurate with their qualifications are also eligible for consideration," he
said.

The structure of the training programme, he said, would contain two elements
namely the soft skills lasting for two months and on-the-job training lasting
six months.

Based on the Bank Negara experience and a slight touch of the programme, the
Prime Minister was confident that participants would be able to find appropriate
jobs and as a start, Bank Negara and 25 GLCs would participate in a programme
involving 3,000 graduands.

Meanwhile, Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Nor Mohamed Yakcop
said the selection of candidates for the first batch of trainees would be
made in stages, targeting graduates with the Bachelor's degree who did not get
any employment after six months of graduation and working graduates whose jobs
were not commensurate with their qualifications.

Those interested in participating in the programme can surf the SL1M website
www.epu.gov.my/sl1m.