Call for emphasis on technical, financial courses

KUCHING: The Sarawak government should prioritise technical and financial courses when it considers providing free tertiary education which is scheduled to start in 2026.

Otherwise it would be pointless to produce excessive numbers of nontechnical graduates who will not match the needs of the market, said Sarawak Business Federation (SBF) secretary-general Datuk Jonathan Chai.

Welcomed the emphasis on technical and financial courses, he said there was a severe shortage of graduates from technical and financial disciplines in the market.

“As most are well aware, there is a great demand for engineers and information technology (IT) professionals in our labour market, especially in the booming development of downstream industries in Bintulu and Samalaju Industrial Park,” he said when contacted today.

With the implementation of Post Covid-19 Development Strategy (PCDS 2030), he said a lot more industrial plants are expected to be set up with more technical experts and engineers required.

Chai, who is also Association of the Boards of Management of Aided Primary Schools in Kuching, Samarahan and Serian president, hoped the move would help to encourage more students to take up Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects at the secondary level.

“We must be sensitive to the needs and the development trends and we don’t want our labour market flooded with unemployed graduates and that would be a waste of our human resource.

“Having said that, we still need to give a balanced emphasis to other disciplines too, especially the training of good teachers who would eventually determine the quality of our future generations,” he added.

Premier Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Abang Johari Tun Openg recently said that intakes into Sarawak-owned institutions of higher learning will give priority to students taking up technical and financial disciplines when free tertiary education starts in 2026.

He said this is to encourage more students taking up disciplines, such as engineering, accountancy, cyber analysis, cyber law and computer science, will then have better chances of securing employment.

“We don’t want more students to take up non-technical disciplines because they will not find it easy to get jobs after graduating,” he added.