The country's current unemployment rate is at 3.9 percent, an improvement over last year, the Dewan Rakyat was told today.

According to a report by employers, the number of job vacancies till May this year was 55, 230, said Deputy Minister of Human Resources Dr Abdul Latiff Ahmad.

"This showed a 12.4 percent improvement over the same period last year," he added.

Abdul Latiff was replying to Thong Fah Chong (BN-Ipoh Timur) who wanted to know the unemployment rate in the country and the increase of employment rate since early this year.

"Vacancies for job had showed an improvement in correlation with the economic revival," he explained.

The deputy minister also said the employers' report cited several reasons for graduates being unemployed. Among them are lack of jobs, employers giving priority to experienced workers during economic downturn, surplus of graduates over market demand, and graduates' lack of communication skills and qualifications.

Training scheme

To resolve the problem, the deputy minister said the human resources ministry had spent RM57.24 million on a graduates training scheme.

He said that as at June 11 this year, a total of 7, 529 graduates had participated in the scheme.

The graduates training scheme was designed to provide training to unemployed graduates. Courses offered are information communication technology (ICT) and languages skill training, such as English language, to enhance their communication skills.

To a supplementary question from Ronald Kiandee (BN-Beluran) on what efforts had the ministry put in to fill the vast number of vacancies in the plantation sector to reduce the unemployed index, Abdul Latiff said that graduates did not show any interest in plantation work.

The deputy minister said about 30 percent of total vacancies are in the plantation sector.

He further explained that the main reason was graduates are not interested to work in rural areas which are not developed or attractive. "These (rural) places are not close to their (youth) lifestyle," he added.

Low salary is not the main reason. Furthermore, the government provides free housing while the employer provides free utilities such as electricity and water, he said.