Unemployed Graduates - Government Mainly To Blame.
The government has formed a special committee to solve the problem of unemployed graduates, said Higher Education Minister Datuk Mustapa Mohamed. The committee is headed by Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, he said today after addressing more than 3,000 students in Universiti Malaysia Sabah's new intake.
He was commenting on a statement by Deputy Minister of Human Resources Datuk Abdul Rahman Bakar in the Dewan Rakyat on Monday that 70 per cent of 20,217 jobless graduates were from public universities, 26 per cent from private institutions of higher learning and the rest from overseas universities. Mustapa said the statistics might not reflect the true employment situation as some of the graduates registered with the Human Resources Ministry's Electronic Labour Exchange (ELX) could be working but looking for better jobs or jobs with higher pay. He said he would cross check the ELX figures with data from the National Economic Action Council and the Statistics Department to get a better picture of the situation.
**** There are several ways of looking at this increasingly nagging problem. One would be to continue on the present track i.e. keep upping the number of places in local unis, create more institutions of higher learning, persist in the current policy of flooding these universities with Malays who would hardly qualify anywhere else in the whole wide world, and then form committees to sort out the blunders after they've occured. Given the present mentality of the powers that be, this is probably what is going to happen.
Another would be for the authorities to take a cold, clinical look, Singapore-style, at the problem at hand, understand that it is present policy which has rendered these otherwise productive people at 'non-graduate' level, as unemployable, and take measures to avoid this in the long term. Put simply, this unemployed lot would have found their niche in life if they had not gone to uni and what hampers them now is the fact that they are graduates. There is no pride either for them or the government if more and more local graduates are looked down upon as substandard or unfit for decent employment. Unfortunately successive governments in our country have been found wanting in this area, lack the political will to take brave but risky decisions, and unlike the Singapore government, will still continue to pander to narrow nationalistic and racial sentiments to stay in power lest PAS takes advantage of the situation. If in the process of maintaining this cowardly stance, the numbers of these unemployed graduates should rise to the hundreds of thousands, as it inevitably will, so be it. Sorry people, first class is a watch word in Singapore. We are merely also-rans. So too are our local graduates.
He was commenting on a statement by Deputy Minister of Human Resources Datuk Abdul Rahman Bakar in the Dewan Rakyat on Monday that 70 per cent of 20,217 jobless graduates were from public universities, 26 per cent from private institutions of higher learning and the rest from overseas universities. Mustapa said the statistics might not reflect the true employment situation as some of the graduates registered with the Human Resources Ministry's Electronic Labour Exchange (ELX) could be working but looking for better jobs or jobs with higher pay. He said he would cross check the ELX figures with data from the National Economic Action Council and the Statistics Department to get a better picture of the situation.
**** There are several ways of looking at this increasingly nagging problem. One would be to continue on the present track i.e. keep upping the number of places in local unis, create more institutions of higher learning, persist in the current policy of flooding these universities with Malays who would hardly qualify anywhere else in the whole wide world, and then form committees to sort out the blunders after they've occured. Given the present mentality of the powers that be, this is probably what is going to happen.
Another would be for the authorities to take a cold, clinical look, Singapore-style, at the problem at hand, understand that it is present policy which has rendered these otherwise productive people at 'non-graduate' level, as unemployable, and take measures to avoid this in the long term. Put simply, this unemployed lot would have found their niche in life if they had not gone to uni and what hampers them now is the fact that they are graduates. There is no pride either for them or the government if more and more local graduates are looked down upon as substandard or unfit for decent employment. Unfortunately successive governments in our country have been found wanting in this area, lack the political will to take brave but risky decisions, and unlike the Singapore government, will still continue to pander to narrow nationalistic and racial sentiments to stay in power lest PAS takes advantage of the situation. If in the process of maintaining this cowardly stance, the numbers of these unemployed graduates should rise to the hundreds of thousands, as it inevitably will, so be it. Sorry people, first class is a watch word in Singapore. We are merely also-rans. So too are our local graduates.
posted by The Malaysian. at 7/07/2006 10:45:00 AM
2 Comments:
If we follow singapore, sure to be revolution and problems. What to do. Dont vote gamen-lah.
This present predicament is of our own doing. UMNO ruled the country since its inception, formulated and implemented various versions of educational policies throughout and akibatnya seperti tikus membiaki labu. We have half-baked policy makers who are more interested in personal and short-term gain and glorifications. How various ministers of educations come on board and tinkled with educational policies and yet each one of them demonstrated their own lack of trust in their own creation. Which education minister since has their own children educated in Malaysia? In a nutshell, we are suckers for believing in them for it is us, you and me, that bestow them the power to screw us up royally.
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