100,000 school-leavers will be provided loans to pursue skills training programmes early next year by the Human Resources Ministry in a bid to reduce the country?s dependency on foreign labour.

RM500 million obtained from the Ministry of Finance would be used for this purpose, according to Human Resources Minister Datuk Dr Fong Chan Onn. The fund would be managed by a special body set up for this. He also mentioned that there are about two million legal and 1.2 million illegal foreign workers in the country. The Government is worried by the increasing number and the social problems posed by these foreign workers.

The move by the Human Resources Ministry to provide more loans for school leavers is to ensure that locals are able to take up jobs presently done by foreign workers in order to reduce their intake in the future. Programmes like mechatronics, tool and die machining, and industry machining and automobiles are some of the areas concerned.

Datuk Dr Fong mentioned that only students from institutes that met the ministry?s requirements would be offered the loans. 120,000 school leavers pursuing skills training programmes had received RM562 million from the Ministry since 2001 thus far. The present 20 industrial training institutes can only take in 10,000 students per year.

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