KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 21 – Jobless Malaysians, especially those retrenched in Singapore, should seek employment in Iskandar Malaysia, Human Resources Minister Datuk Dr S. Subramaniam said tonight.
“With the investments start coming in to the Iskandar region, I believe there will be many job vacancies available.
“And those who got retrenched should try to seek employment there. There are some 12,000 vacancies available in Johor,” he told reporters at the 5th Young Indian Entrepreneur Award ceremony here.
He said a meeting with the ministry’s labour attache in Singapore and employer representatives in Johor Baru last week had found that the situation was not as serious although there was an anticipation that it might happen as Singapore was slipping into recession.
“There were no real large numbers of people being retrenched in Singapore and coming back to Malaysia at the moment,” he said when asked to comment on rumours that tens of thousands of Malaysian workers from the services and manufacturing sectors in Singapore would be retrenched when employers, hit by the recession, start downsizing. On the Western Digital issue, Subramaniam said his officers were in the process of assisting the retrenched employees to get the necessary compensation.
The American hard disk manufacturer had closed down its plant in Kuching after 13 years in operations and retrenched all its 1,500 workers, citing a sharp drop in demand for its products.
On football players, he said if their employers failed to pay their salaries, they could take their case to the civil court because professional football players were not defined as workers under the Industrial Relations Act and Employment Act.
“To the best of my knowledge, I don’t think both Acts actually covered that. They should go for civil action,” he said when asked to comment on the players’ claim that some of them had not been paid for up to two years. – Bernama
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