WHILE big plans for upskilling Malaysia’s workforce are being rolled out starting this month, the majority of low-skilled workers do not know where to go to get trained, a survey of young people targeted by such schemes shows.
Over RM19 billion has been allocated for various training programmes in Budget 2021, including RM3.7 billion for the Employment Generation Guarantee Scheme (JanaKerja), which aims to create 500,000 new jobs that involve upgrading skills and retraining.
However, a survey by The Centre policy institute among non-graduate gig workers shows that while 78% of respondents indicated an interest in reskilling, 68% have never undertaken a skills development or training programme before. Furthermore, over half of them claimed not to know where or how to access courses relevant to them (see Chart 3).