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I heard Dr S.Subra talking about this yesterday, and its in the papers today. It seems that of the 900 seats offered nationwide to Indian youths to pursue a skills course for free, with accommodation, meals and RM100 monthly for expenditure, only 249 enrolled for its July intake (The Star). That means its about nine Indian students for each of the 26 Human Resources Training Institutes (HRTI) (a.k.a ILJTM) nationwide under the purview of the Manpower Department.

According to Dr S.Subra, opportunities were being created for Indian youths to acquire skills and secure jobs with good wages but they chose ignore it, even though plenty of advertisements are taken out in newspapers (Tamil papers too).

Dr Subramaniam said it was sad to see youths wasting their potential, energy, creativeness and power to build a better future for themselves by learning a skill.

“Indian youths must understand that foreign firms are setting up businesses in Penang, Selangor and Johor and those with innovative skills are the ones who can secure jobs with good prospects,” he said.

According to him, among the factors for the lack of interest is (i) the poor perception of skills-based employment and (ii) the fact that the youths preferred academic courses (NST).

“Maybe they are not aware that employment opportunities in the skills sector are more than in the academic sector.”

He said usually 80 to 90 per cent of ILJTM graduates were able to find work within three to four months of finishing their courses.

Dr Subramaniam said Malaysian Industrial Development Authority statistics showed that a total of 40,000 jobs were created in the first six months of the year through local and foreign investments.

He said through the courses, participants could become entrepreneurs or experts in the skills acquired.

“There are Malaysian welders who are highly skilled and have had offers and work in the oil and gas industry in West Asia and are paid well,” he said.

I guess the two factors are quite true. Coupled with lack of self-confidence, lack of proficiency in English and Malay, and possibility of unemployment also play a role in youths ignoring such jobs. Majority of the trainees in these institutes constitute of one race only, and they are assisted in securing jobs in GLCs, the enormous number of bumiputra contractors/firms, and goverment agencies. Even the Chinese youths also choose to stay away, with MCA trying hard to convince the career prospects of skills-based training.

What MIC/YSS can do is to continue its efforts, and perhaps to add value to its services by providing counseling, helping to create network between industry and the trainees so that can offer jobs faster, get some success story candidates to share their experience, and provide support group for students in the institutes so that the students don’t feel alone or ignored.

Secondly, they should target the parents. I think a segment of the parents are still in the old mindset. They don’t want their children to be away from them or to choose their own career. MIC/YSS can organise trips to these institutes for parents, or have an open day at this places, so that the community can know more about the facilities and environment there.

Thirdly, there should efforts to avoid these institutes into becoming like local universities which are slanted towards certain race and religion only. This is undoubtedly hard, but I guess this is also another reason why such institutes are shunned. Simple things like not serving beef, practicing vegetarianism, putting God images in room, etc., should not be be banned or ignored.

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Last week, NST wrote on slavery in estates, citing the case of a family who escaped from one such estates. Then, MIC-owned YSS gave the following comments via its assistant director Vanita Ramany, who said YSS had brought cases to the police, but not enough attention was given:

She cited a case where an 18-year-old worker escaped from an estate in Bahau, Negri Sembilan, in March after enduring years of abuse.

“The girl sought our help and we referred her to the Bahau police. But till now, nothing has been done.

“She is currently under the care of a welfare home,” said Vanita, who added that she had contacted Negri Sembilan police chief Datuk Osman Salleh over the matter.

While Osman was helpful, she said some policemen did not share his enthusiasm.

Vanita also referred to one case in Malacca which was reported to the police. But the victim was arrested for armed robbery when he showed the scars on his body.

“The next day, he was released after the police realised they had made a mistake.”

Vanita said there were also six other estate workers who had sought help but they never “showed up at our office again”.

More recently, the YSS, MIC and Negeri Sembilan police had a meeting to further discuss this problem:

Police met representatives of several bodies recently to discuss how they could work together to resolve the problem of “slavery” in several estates in the country. They included the Welfare and Manpower Departments, MIC’s Yayasan Strategik Social (YSS) and state executive councillor for estate affairs V.S. Mogan.

State police chief Datuk Osman Salleh said they were committed in their efforts to put an end to such incidents and would work closely with the various bodies and political parties concerned.

“We want to get to the root of the problem and resolve it once and for all. We have yet to establish the extent of the problem as we were unable to get sufficient information from the few alleged victims who came forward.”
Osman said their investigations revealed that some such alleged cases were linked to bad debts between the workers and their employers, which carried on from one generation to another.

“These cases of bad debts are prevalent in many estates and sometimes the next generation is made to work to pay off the earlier loan taken by the person’s father or even grandfather.

“However, we are determined to get to the bottom of this and put an end to such things.

“We are in the process of investigating how these debts originated and how they grew to such enormous amounts. We are also hoping that someone from the estates allegedly involved will come forward to help us.”

He said the recent call by the government for all estates to register their workers would be a great help to the police and Manpower Department as it would enable them to keep track of any untoward activities in estates.

From 2005 till now, he said police had received five reports on estate slavery, of which three had been investigated and the papers handed over to the deputy public prosecutor.

“However, these three cases were marked as NFA (no further action) after the DPP was unable to find sufficient evidence to prosecute.

“As for the two other cases, they are still under investigation.”

On the meeting with YSS and Mogan, he said the MIC had expressed its appreciation to the police for their co-operation in investigating such cases.

“The YSS and state MIC leaders are working closely with us. We assure you that such cases of slavery in estates will be a thing of the past.

“We will continue to hold regular meetings with the agencies and bodies concerned and together we will resolve this problem.”

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From the NST:

KUALA LUMPUR: An MIC effort to help academically-weak and problematic Indian secondary students has paid off.

The MIC-run Yayasan Strategic Social’s family development unit head K.A. Gunah said the party’s Plus-8 programme had proven to be a resounding success by helping 5,100 students in 74 secondary schools.

He said thanks to the year-long programme which ended in July, these students had a better future now and did not need to go the way of some other children from the community who could not escape the clutches of social ills such as crime.

He said the key to the programme’s success was in its ability to bring children and parents together to work as a family unit and motivate the children to improve themselves.

“Besides ironing out students’ problems, which were mainly centred around poor parent-child relationships, the programme has put in place an effective network for the students, their teachers and YSS.”

Funded by the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry and supported by the Education Ministry, the programme featured workshops on character building, human values and uncovering of skills for students.

“We then hold two workshops for parents on the subject of parent-child interaction and relationships and the need for self-discipline and sacrifice. The programme ends with a two-day, one-night camp for the students and their parents.

“We are now keying in the student data and feedback on the programme to prepare a report for the two ministries. With this done, we hope to launch the second round of Plus-8 programmes.”

Gunah, who is the coordinator for the programme in Johor and Malacca, said YSS ran them jointly with Indian-based NGOs.

YSS got the help of teachers to identify target groups of 50 students in schools in eight states to attend a total of 812 Plus-8 programmes.

He said the programme was the brainchild of party president Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu, who felt that rising social ills among Indian youth had to be nipped in the bud by solving the problem of delinquency.

During the programme, Gunah said he came across sad cases of how students had got into trouble because of parental neglect.

“A boy who had been punished 22 times in 10 months for disciplinary problems, including bringing pornographic VCDs to school, told us his father had left the family.

“His mother was away at work until late at night and he had to fend for himself, including cooking and washing his own clothes.”

He said the girls were often led astray by youths or men outside the school environment.

“Most of them point to nagging mothers and absent fathers and the fact that there was no one to listen to them.”

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