The Malaysian govt is committed to lowering the employment rate by creating more employment opportunities, said Finance Minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Abdul Aziz.

The commitment, among others, can be seen through the Jamin Kerja Keluarga Malaysia initiative which would provide 600,000 job opportunities involving an allocation of RM4.8 billion. Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob is scheduled to launch the initiative on Feb 19, Bernama reports.

“Through the Department of Statistics Malaysia, we have recorded a drop in the unemployment rate in December (2021) to 4.2% compared to 4.3% in November.

“We know job creation is the foundation of economic recovery and that is why job creation is one of the main priorities in the budget. In Budget 2021, the government had targeted creating 500,000 jobs and Alhamdulillah, we have achieved that target.

“This year, in the spirit of the job guarantee concept, the Prime Minister will launch the programme to provide 600,000 jobs, an increase of 100,000 over the target in 2021,” explained the Finance Minister on Sunday (Feb 13).

Tengku Zafrul said the government has continued the MySTEP programme this year by offering short-term contract employment opportunities in the public sector and government-linked companies (GLCs) in an effort to increase the marketability of job seekers.

He said the government is targeting 80,000 job opportunities to be offered through the programme this year compared to 50,000 the previous year.

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In another development, Tengku Zafrul added that the govt would continue to make efforts to revive the economic sectors affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. It includes providing assistance to tourism sector players, especially in Sabah, through various initiatives including wage subsidy programmes to enable them to revive growth in the sector.

According to him, many sectors of the domestic economy have shown recovery based on the gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the fourth quarter of 3.6% announced recently. However, the tourism sector is still not on course.

“We had achieved the projection of 3% to 4% growth for 2021. This year the projection (of GDP growth) is between 5.5% and 6.5%.

“We notice that many sectors have recovered, but the tourism sector has not yet,” he said, adding that the government has allocated various incentives for the tourism sector in Budget 2022 amounting to RM1.6 billion.

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