Malaysia To Have 35% Skilled Workers By 2020

KUCHING (Sarawak, Malaysia), Jan 10 (Bernama) -- Thirty-five per cent of Malaysia's workforce by 2020 will comprise skilled manpower. Human Resource Minister Richard Riot Jaem said this would enable the country to be "well on track to achieve the high-income nation status by then". He was speaking at the graduation ceremony of 300 participants of the 1MalaysiaGRIP (1Malaysia Globally Recognised Industry and Professional Certification Programme) who had completed their various certificate level upskilling and reskilling courses here Friday. "With three more years to 2020, I am proud to say Malaysia is well on track. "And it is in part due to the efforts and initiatvies put in place by the Human Resource Development Fund (HRDF) established in 1993 to develop quality human capital and a world-class workforce," he said. Riot said the HRDF, under the auspices of his ministry, had done a great job in providing various up-skilling and re-skilling and soon multi-skilling programmes for Malaysian workers in various positions across a wide range of industries. "As at Dec 31 last year, a total of 23,730 employees of HRDF registered and non-registered employees had participated in this programme featuring over 1,000 certification courses. "In Sarawak alone, we have more than 1,000 employees who had participated and which had cost the ministry some US$2.02 million (RM9 million) to provide," he said. Riot said it was necessary to include workers or employees who had not registered with the HRDF as the government had provided a fund of US$33.72 million (RM150 million) for the purpose. With three more years to 2020, he said it was now time for the country to intensify its efforts to produce more high quality human capital to meet the challenging demands of the local, regional and global marketplace. "HRDF will continue its mandate to help the less academically-inclined demographic of the Malaysian labour force to reduce the competency gap that we are actually facing," he said. -- BERNAMA