The government is in the process of reviewing the country's labour laws, said Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin.      

He said the government was fully aware of employers' concerns that Malaysia's labour laws remained overly cumbersome and restrictive.     

"We need to update and review our labour laws to attract and retain local as well as foreign investments," he said at the Malaysian Employers Federation (MEF) annual dinner at Bandar Sunway in Kuala Lumpur tonight.     

Also present were Deputy Human Resource Minister Maznah Mazlan, Chief Secretary to the government Sidek Hassan, MEF president Azman Shah Haron and American-Malaysian Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Nicholas Zeffreys.      

He said the stark reality today was that about 75 percent of Malaysia's workforce was low skilled.     

"In developed nations, skilled employees represent 65 to 80 percent of the total workforce. To add this, more than 100,000 students enter the workforce after secondary school every year without any skills whatsoever," he said.     

Muhyiddin said the government realised that in order to move upstream, there was a need to certify skills of the workforce and reduce the skills gap.     

"At the pre-employment level, various efforts are underway to review the curriculum at the secondary and tertiary levels to ensure that school leavers and graduates have the necessary skills required by the market," he said.   

'Manage foreign workers responsibly'

He said having a pool of skilled workers would also help to reduce dependence on foreign workers.     

”We need to encourage our latent workforce to join the labour market and these include women, retirees, students and persons with disability. This could be done through part time work, home office and flexi hours," he said.     

Muhyiddin said the Cabinet Committee on Foreign Labour and Illegal Foreign Workers chaired by himself was focused on making employers more responsible towards their workers, reducing the government's costs in handling the group and bringing down crimes involving foreigners.      

"We are of the view that employers are the people who should be responsible for their foreign workers," Muhyiddin said.     

He said Malaysian needed to regain the competitive edge and become more business friendly if it wanted to retain investors.     

"We must benchmark ourselves against other countries and provide guidelines to measure both development and achievements," he added. 

- Bernama