00:00Newly appointed Human Resources Minister R. Ramanan has come under fire over a proposal
00:06to rely on unemployed Indians to address the labour shortage in certain sectors,
00:11to reduce the country's reliance on foreign workers.
00:15URME Chairman P. Ramasamy said Ramanan's proposal showed poor understanding of labour economics
00:20as well as the social and economic realities of the Indian community.
00:24In a Facebook post, Ramasamy said those employed at saloons, goldsmiths, and restaurants
00:31were generally low-skilled workers who were also underpaid.
00:35He said while Indians may be unskilled or unemployed,
00:38they still require wages that can sustain a reasonable cost of living.
00:43Ramanan was reported by Scoop as saying he had received many text messages
00:47about a shortage of workers at restaurants, barbershops, and goldsmiths,
00:52adding that Malaysia should explore training unemployed local Indians
00:55and placing them in these industries.
00:58Ramasamy said for years, working-class Indians had sought to escape poverty and underdevelopment
01:03by aspiring to jobs in high-growth sectors of the economy.
01:08He said many had turned to business and entrepreneurship in the private sector,
01:12but their efforts were repeatedly thwarted by overt and covert discrimination by the state,
01:17raising the question of why Indians should be confined to low-skilled employment sectors.
01:22Naritha Raja, FMT.
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