PARLIAMENT Malaysia needs to have 35 percent of skilled local workers to achieve the status of a fully developed nation by 2020, said Deputy Human Resources Minister Ismail Abd Muttalib.

He said, at present, only 28 percent of the 14.3 million workers in the country are skilled local workers.

The oil and gas sector also requires 30 percent skilled workers, he said.

“We are in the midst of studying the extent of our requirement for labour. We do not want foreign workers to take up the vacancies that should be filled by local workers,” he said in reply to Nasrudin Hassan (PAS-Temerloh) at the Dewan Rakyat sitting today.

Nasruddin also asked about measures taken to address the issue of increasing number of unskilled foreign workers, which resulted in a cash outflow of RM28 billion last year.

Ismail said the recruitment of foreign workers is only open to five sectors, namely construction, agriculture, plantation, manufacturing and services, which are less attractive to local workers.

- Bernama