As part of its 14th general elections manifesto, Pakatan Harapan Youth today pledged to offer one million jobs within the first five years of the federal opposition taking over Putrajaya - starting with a systematic reduction of the current dependency on cheap foreign labour.

Parti Amanah Negara deputy youth chief Faiz Fadzil said their offer was made based on an existing pool of some 400,000 jobless graduates and in the backdrop of ongoing retrenchments which has affected thousands of workers.

"We are looking at jobs in two sectors, skilled and semi-skilled.

"The skilled jobs would allow more graduates to take up employment, while the hard labour jobs can be offered through a reduction of dependency on migrant workers," he told a joint press conference with other Harapan Youth leaders at Amanah's headquarters in Kuala Lumpur.

Higher minimum wage

Faiz also said Harapan Youth has proposed for the national minimum wage to be raised to RM1,500 from the current RM1,000.

"If the minimum wage is increased, this will naturally attract more Malaysians to be involved in the 3D or 'Dirty, Dangerous and Difficult' sectors," he said.

PKR youth chief Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad said the issue of dependency on migrant workers has never been solved due to a "national addiction" to the low wage economic model.

"At one point this model was adopted by many countries but Malaysia has never moved up from that value chain.

Dependency on foreign labour 

"Now when our workers can no longer survive on the low wages, we become dependent on foreign workers," said Nik Nazmi who cited a goal of only three million registered migrant workers by the year 2025.

At the same time, he noted that there must be a systematic reform of the entire migrant workers recruitment system, focusing on eradicating corruption at all levels.

The Selangor exco for education also cited ongoing efforts by the state government to promote vocational training as well as in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, or STEM.

Representing DAP Youth, Pasir Pinji state-assemblyperson, Howard Lee, meanwhile, said Malaysia is expected to become an ageing population by the year 2030, where a larger segment of the population would be aged above 65.

Unlike regular domestic helpers, Lee explained that other higher-income nations had trained its own citizens to work as private nurses or professional carers for the elderly.

More affordable homes by 2020 

Aside from offering more jobs, Harapan Youth as part of its GE14 manifesto also presented a target to provide more than one million units of affordable housing by the year 2020.

In order to improve access, it proposed to set-up a "Housing X-Change" online database for the government and private developers to list out all available units of affordable homes nationwide.

Today is the fourth series of Harapan Youth's GE14 manifesto presentation, the proposals of which would be incorporated into the federal opposition's final offer for the people.