Human Resource Minister Dr Fong Chan Onn said today the skills training institute which is to be constructed on the grounds of the South Indian Labour Fund Home in Penang will be completed before 2005.

"The plans for the institute is carrying on well and we hope to see it completed within the Eighth Malaysian Plan which is from 2001 to 2005," said the minister.

Contractors are being short-listed for the job and the financial allocation for the institute is about RM40 million, Fong told reporters at a press conference in Putrajaya.

In 1999, the government took over the seven-acre plot in Nibong Tebal to build the institute but up until today construction work has not begun.

The training institute was to benefit the children of estate workers in the area, which was once an oil palm plantation.

"We will make the project bigger and the training centre will not have a special focus. But we will be taking into account the children of estate workers, and to elevate their work skills to a higher level," said Fong.

The South Indian Labour Fund was the brainchild of the late philanthropist Arumugam Pillai, who donated the land to build a home to help look after aged South Indian labourers and their dependants.

The residents of the home have already been transferred to government-run welfare homes.

Controversial project

The project which was scheduled for completion at the end of this year, could not be completed because the ministry "was still waiting for the Treasury to allot the money".

Initially, there was confusion over the financial allocation when MIC president S Samy Vellu's former press secretary S Ganapathy disclosed that cabinet had allocated RM10 million.

However, Human Resource Ministry officials later said that only a maximum of RM50,000 had been allocated for the institute.

The disbursement of the South Indian Labour Fund also turned into a controversy in 1999 when certain quarters claimed that Samy, who is works minister, had taken RM2 million from it for the government.

But the minister denied the charge, saying "the government does not need the money".

The fund had a total of RM5 million when it was disbursed in July 1999.