By RONALD BENJAMIN – September 19, 2019 @ 11:14pm
The Association for Community and Dialogue welcomes Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s promise that technical and vocational education and training (TVET) will be prioritised to reskill the workforce.
Dr Mahathir said the poor were too poor compared with the rich and there was a need to increase their income, but not just by increasing their salaries.
The abilities and skills of our workers needs to be improved to become more productive. TVET will lead us to this goal.
The Human Resources and Education Ministries have a major role to play in information dissemination, especially to the Bottom 40 per cent (B40) group.
For our workforce to reskill and upskill themselves, a strategy to disseminate information to youth and workers is vital.
The International Labour Organisation’s Human Resources Development Convention says there is a need for continuous dissemination of employment information to ensure that information and guidance are available to children, young persons and adults, including programmes for disabled people.
This information and guidance shall cover the choice of an occupation, vocational training and related educational opportunities, employment situation and employment prospects, promotion prospects, conditions of work, safety and hygiene at work, and other aspects of working life.
The information and guidance shall be supplemented by information on collective agreements and of the rights and obligations of all concerned under labour law.
The convention builds awareness about rights of workers to human development, in relation to vocational training as well as rights under the labour law.
In Malaysia, it is vital that information on human resources development policies, skills training, labour and industrial laws are disseminated to the B40 group to encourage them to attend TVET education and learn about the importance of being aware of laws governing employment.
Parliamentarians, assemblymen and local councillors should disseminate information to the B40 group.
The government should reach out to opposition parliamentarians in this effort.
RONALD BENJAMIN
Secretary, Association for Community and Dialogue
Source: www.nst.com.my/opinion
Comment: It’s not just the awareness, there are also other critical factors that’s affecting the uptake of TVET courses among the students. What the public is not aware is that there are many students, especially B40 group, could not pursue TVET education due to lack of financing from PTPK (this affects many private providers and directly affects the livelihood of the TVET lecturers, who are mainly in the B40 group as well.
Though public TVET institutions provide courses Free or at minimal fees, there are other challenges as well.
