Local employees will not be affected by the abolition of the Workmen’s Compensation Act 1952, Human Resources Minister M Kulasegaran said today.

“I’ll make sure local workers will not get less (than what they are getting now)," he told reporters during a working visit to the Kulim Advanced Technology Training Center (Adtec).

Kulasegaran said the abolition of the act was to safeguard the welfare of migrants working in the country in terms of insurance coverage, as well as to show that the government did not discriminate against them.

The move, he said, was also in line with the Equality of Treatment (Accident Compensation) Convention 1925 and the Conference Committee on the Application of Standards under the International Labour Organisation.

Kulasegaran said unlike local workers, migrant workers are protected under the Social Security Organisation (Socso), and the government could take action against employers that did not sign up their employees to the programme.

“For instance, representatives from the Japanese government recently met me and requested for our people to work there because their population is getting older. 

"So, we must make sure our people who go there (Japan) to work are covered by insurance.

“We do not want incidents like in Bukit Kukus to happen again, where it involved many migrant workers. Those killed get nothing (compensation), which is not fair,” he said referring to the landslide in Penang last October that killed nine.

Meanwhile, on his visit to Adtec, Kulasegaran said efforts should be made to promote the centre to get more young people to take up technical and vocational education and training (TVET).

He said the marketability of TVET graduates was high and the public stigma towards vocational graduates had changed.

"Many young people are unemployed because they have no skills, they need to enrol for skills training and we will look at these skills institutions so that they can attract more students," he said.

- Bernama