Published August 18, 2008

KL refutes Anwar's claim of 800,000 jobless next year

Email this article
Print article
Feedback

(KUANTAN) The government has refuted the claim by Malaysia's de facto opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim that about 800,000 people in the country would be unemployed next year.

'I don't know how he had arrived at the figure because, according to our records, there are only about 40,000 people who are unemployed between now and January,' said Ismail Abdul Rahim, director-general of manpower in the Human Resource Ministry. 'If in the next three months we reach 800,000 unemployed, I cannot see the rationale,' he said after launching the ministry's Employment Carnival and 'Meeting the Clients Day' here on Saturday.

Mr Ismail said this when asked to comment on the allegation by Mr Anwar in his political rallies recently that the country's unemployment figure would reach 800,000 next year.

Mr Ismail said most of the 40,000 people who were unemployed were not retrenched because their employers had closed shop but because they had opted for the voluntary separation scheme offered by their employers.

He said if the allegation were true, the government still had the option of repatriating foreign workers. 'We have 2.2 million job opportunities held by the foreign workers currently and the employers would have to repatriate these workers and cannot retrench the local workers,' he said.



In addition, he said, there were currently 24,429 vacancies in the various sectors in the country. -- Bernama