KUALA LUMPUR: The Human Resources Ministry has identified a total of 209,675 job opportunities that can be filled by locals this year, its minister Datuk Dr S Subramaniam said yesterday.

He said the vacancies were in the manufacturing, services, plantation, farming and construction sectors.

“We hope we can reduce our dependence on foreign workers and employers will give priority to hiring locals,” he said at the national-level Workers Day celebration which was officiated by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak at the Putra Stadium in Bukit Jalil here.

He said from Oct 1, 2008 till April this year, a total of 17,436 Malaysian workers faced retrenchment while 7,418 others took up VSS (voluntary separation schemes).

“The majority of those retrenched were from the electrical and electronic sub-sectors, textile and clothing manufacturing and the services sector,” he added.

He said through concerted efforts by his ministry, till April 30, a total of 7,285 of those laid off were able to find new jobs.

The government, he said, encouraged employers to hire retrenched workers and had provided several tax incentives for this.

“The ministry is prepared to provide training in skills required by industries, including providing allowances for the trainees concerned,” he said.

Dr Subramaniam also said employers needed to take various steps to attract local workers like drawing up work schedules that were suitable and offering pay packages that were appropriate for the work performed.

He said among the initial steps the ministry had taken in tackling retrenchment was setting up national and state level tripartite retrenchment monitoring committees which meet once a month to recommend measures to alleviate the problem.

Besides this, the ministry had also expanded the service of its ‘JobsMalaysia’ portal to include the public sector.

“Since it was launched in May 2008, till April 26 2009, a total of 306 employers from various government agencies had used the portal to source workers,” Subramaniam said.

— Bernama