Youth and Sports Minister Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman has made an ambitious request for Budget 2020.
He is asking Putrajaya to provide RM6 billion to create 350,000 jobs over the next five years.
“Job creation is the ultimate priority,” Syed Saddiq told Malaysiakini in an interview yesterday.
“You can win 100 gold medals but if we’re not able to resolve basic economic issues which involve young people, which at its base is jobs, we won’t be able to serve their primary interest,” he added.
The “special budget” allocation is one of three priorities for youths that Syed Saddiq outlined yesterday.
He declined to go into detail about how the funds will be used to create jobs, hinting instead that it would be part of the Budget 2020 announcement.
“In order to elaborate on the plan, we need to wait for the budget,” he said.
Budget 2020 will be tabled on Friday by Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng.
According to the Department of Statistics, as of July this year, about 524,800 people were jobless, with the unemployment rate at 3.3 percent.
Of this, youth unemployment is estimated to be at 10.9 percent.
Syed Saddiq’s second youth budget request for 2020 includes allowances for technical and vocational training (TVET) students from underprivileged backgrounds.
This, he said, would be more effective than providing untargeted cash handouts to youths.
“If you look at the rate of employment after graduating from TVET, it’s really high, at about 94-96 percent, much better than some of the best public universities.
“So the question is, how do we pull more people to join the TVET education stream while, at the same time, reprioritising the focus on TVET?” he said.
The government is pushing TVET, as one key way to close the wealth gap among Malaysians under the Shared Prosperity Vision 2030, by producing highly-skilled workers.
The third youth budget request is to increase the minimum wage from RM1,100 to RM1,200 a month.
This is in line with Pakatan Harapan's pledge to raise the minimum wage to RM1,500 by the end of its first term in government.
Meanwhile, on sports, the minister is seeking RM100 million to build sports infrastructure in rural areas that lack them.
Syed Saddiq said priority and emphasis would be given to areas that the National Anti-Drug Agency has identified as hotspots for social problems.
At the same time, the Youth and Sports Ministry is also seeking funds to maintain existing sports infrastructures that have been neglected or highly dilapidated.
For athletes, Syed Saddiq said he wants additional funding for women athletes so that it is equitable to funding for male athletes.
“We’ve done a great injustice for women in sports,” he said, adding that better funding will allow female sports teams to develop better and even get better players.
Likewise, he said, he also wants equitable funding for the country’s para-athletes.
On a related note, Syed Saddiq expects a tough challenge at the Southeast Asia Games (SEA Games), which starts in the Philippines on Nov 30.
He said the Philippines, as the host nation, has the advantage of choosing which games are contested, which has resulted in some sports that Malaysia excels at - such as silat - having a lower medal tally this year.
At the same time, new sports are being introduced, such as underwater hockey.
Despite being on the backfoot, Syed Saddiq said the Malaysian contingent must put its heart and soul into the games.
“We are sending one of the biggest, if not the biggest contingents, for the SEA Games, and our athletes have trained really hard,” he said.
At the last SEA Games hosted in Malaysia in 2017, the country won 145 gold medals, and 323 medals overall, the highest among the competing nations. - Mkini
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