It was government policy that created the problem, said Geoffrey Williams of Malaysia University of Science and Technology (MUST).
Speaking to FMT, he noted that the 10th Malaysia Plan (2011 to 2015) aimed to create 3.3 million jobs by 2020, 68% of which would not require a university degree.
“It aimed for 56.3% to be low-income and 29.5% to be middle-income. So the Malaysia plans have been completely successful in creating meaningless, low-paid, low-value-added, precarious and informal employment for many years,” he said.
He was commenting on Warisan president Shafie Apdal’s call for intensified efforts to provide employment opportunities for graduates so that they would not have to depend on jobs paying low salaries.
Williams said the issue needed to be resolved by the market rather than the government, adding that reforms on the supply side was essential.
“The government must create the right market environment for companies to invest and employ people without government interference within a social market economy,” he added.
Referring to Shafie’s call for the development of entrepreneurial skills among graduates so that they could fit into the gig economy, Williams said this would be good if the goal was to create freelance professional jobs bringing good and stable incomes.
“But if the idea is to create a generation of delivery riders and e-hailing drivers, then this is exploitative, low-paid, low-value-added work which will be devastating to Malaysia’s economic development,” he added.
Carmelo Ferlito, CEO of the Center for Market Education, called for the reform of tertiary education that would see improvements in quality as well as in the selection of students so that universities would produce talent for specific, high-level positions.
He said secondary education should also be reformed so that people could enter the job market without tertiary education.
This meant, he said, that the secondary school curriculum must cover the teaching of professional skills.
Tertiary education should be reserved for scholarly work and preparation for liberal professions, he added.