Maznah Mazlan

KUALA LUMPUR (Nov 17, 2009): Malaysia had technically achieved full employment status as the unemployment rate as at the second quarter of this year was only 3.6%, Deputy Human Resources Minister Datuk Maznah Mazlan told the Dewan Rakyat today.

Explaining that a country is said to have achieved full employment if the jobless rate falls below 4%, Maznah said this, however, did not mean that there are no unemployed persons.

"It is irrefutable that with the increase in knowledge and with more and more graduates every year, many Malaysian youths today refuse to work in certain sectors like construction and agriculture.

"So, we have to use foreign workers in these areas. But all this is done under control and well-planned by the government," she said in reply to Kulasegaran’s supplementary question today.

Kulasegaran had asked what measures the government had taken to deal with the unemployment situation in the country, and the problem of foreign workers taking up job opportunities meant for locals.

Maznah said the government has taken several measures to avoid over-dependency on foreign workers such as by looking at potential from among the women workforce and pensioners and retirees.

She said as at Nov 10, there were 374,272 job seekers registered with the ministry’s JobsMalaysia portal and of this, 145,919 (38.9%) were already employed but interested in looking for better prospects.

She also said the government had no intention of making it compulsory for all unemployed persons to register with the ministry.

"From our observation, there is no country in the world which does this compulsory registration. But there were countries which register them for the purpose of issuing the unemployment benefits," she said.

Maznah said apart from setting up the JobsMalaysia portal for job seekers, the ministry also conducts the National Employment Return census every two years.

"The issue of unemployment is connected to placement of graduates and registration for jobs according to qualification. Some do not register themselves with the portal as they have many other choices.

"Some have been working but did not inform the portal. Some are registered with private job agencies which totalled up to 2,112 now, with 935 of them operating actively. Some were unemployed due to personal reasons," she said.

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