JOHOR BARU: A local business association has taken the lead to start offering skills courses to locals in a bid to help those who are presently unemployed due to the prolonged border closure with Singapore.
Johor Indian Business Association (Jiba) president P. Sivakumar said that many Malaysian workers in Singapore have already started leaving their jobs in Singapore and have started returning home as they were unable to cope with the stress of living apart from their families and earning a meagre income.
“Singapore has also imposed its own version of movement control order recently and even postponed its travel bubble with Hong Kong, yet again. All this is not a good sign for us, ” Sivakumar said in an interview.He added that during the first MCO in March last year, the association was inundated with hundreds of calls from women, especially housewives and single mothers appealing for help and aid as they did not even have money to buy milk for their babies.
“We passed the hat around and collected about RM13,000 from Jiba members which were channelled to these poor people.
“We realised that we need to help them find employment and job placement, ” he said.
“So we decided to collaborate with government agencies to provide training programmes.”
Sivakumar added that for a start, Jiba was looking to provide training in the fields of nursing and security.
He added that they were working with government agencies such as Human Resources Development Fund, Social Security Organisation and National Economic Recovery Plan.
Sivakumar said they would be launching their certified nursing care aid course in June and training for security guards after that.
“With these new skills and certification from the United Kingdom, all these people will be able to get jobs at centres, hospitals and even work as caregivers for senior citizens, ” he said, these courses would be open to all races and many have already signed up.
Jiba’s training director K. Gopalakrishnan said that so far 40 participants have registered for the nursing care aid programme for next month.
“We hope to work with any local hospitals, nursing homes or even child care centres who need such caregivers as we can help provide the training and the people to them, ” he said, adding that with the certification from the UK, participants would be able to work not just in Malaysia but also overseas.
Those interested can email jiba.sme.training@gmail.com or contact 019-754 2064.
Source: https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2021/05/20/group-helps-upskill-the-jobless