Figure out the cause of rising unemployment, PKR tells PM

Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak should figure out the causes for rising unemployment in the country, instead of trying to pin it on companies, says PKR vice-president Rafizi Ramli.

Rafizi said this today in response to Najib ticking off public-listed companies for not participating in Skim Latihan 1Malaysia (SL1M) and warned that they may find government contracts hard to come by in future.

SL1M offers unemployed undergraduates training placements at government-linked companies and the private sector, with monthly allowances, in a bid to improve their employability.

"While I support efforts to reduce unemployment in the country, it is important for us to focus on the reason behind why unemployment is happening.

"Programmes such as SL1M by by Najib's propaganda team to portray the prime minister's concerns for youths hides the facts behind the job market under Najib's leadership," he said in a statement today.

Rafizi said based on statistics from the Labour Department, unemployment between March 2013 and November 2016 had gradually increased.

"The number of unemployed Malaysians in the last three-and-a-half years increased by 16 percent, from 439,600 people in March 2013 to 510,700 in November 2016, he said.

This was despite SL1M being launched in 2011.

Rafizi added that while the government does not provide unemployment data specifically for graduates, Sweden-based The Quality of Government Institute, which tracks global economies, put Malaysia's unemployment rate among graduates at 28.8 percent in 2014.

He said graduates who had taken loans from the National Higher Education Loan Fund Corporation (PTPTN) but cannot find employment are more seriously affected.

"Therefore, Najib threatening private companies to take unemployed graduates under SL1M is an abdication of responsibility as the labour market statistics show more graduates and Malaysians as a whole are unemployed under his administration.

"The key issue that he needs to rectify is with regard to economic management in order to create more job opportunities with salaries that appropriately match the qualifications," Rafizi said.- Mkini