SUNGAI PETANI: The Rural Development Ministry will ramp up efforts to educate the public on the vast potentials of technical vocational education training (TVET).
Its minister Datuk Seri Mahdzir Khalid said the ministry aimed at promoting TVET as a preferred choice among youths.
"TVET is one of the education system pillars in developed nations such as Germany, Japan, France. Even our neighbours like South Korea, China and Singapore are working towards enhancing TVET training.
"Yet in our country, many parents still have this perception that TVET is only for those who do not excel academically.
"We need to focus on mental conditioning to change this. We need to promote TVET via all available platforms to reach out to the people.
"We also promote this by going from state to state," he told reporters after the launch of the TVET Education Institutions Exposition at Aman Jaya Mall here today.
Present was Rural Ministry deputy minister II Datuk Hasbi Habibollah.
Seven agencies under the ministry which operate 280 technical training institutions took part in the three-day expo.
There are now 48,800 students enrolling in 515 programmes from certificate to post-graduate levels in technical institutions under the ministry.
Mahdzir added that the effectiveness of TVET programmes under the ministry had an employment rate of more than 87 per cent.
"We have strong collaborations with renowned technical institutions abroad and we have students attending internship programmes in Japan and Germany.
"Our graduates have also become successful entrepreneurs who create job opportunities for our people," he said.
Mahdzir also attributed the success of the ministry's technical institutions to strong collaboration with industry players.
"Through this strong collaboration, we are able to match our graduates with the industries," he said.
Mahdzir also said the ministry would be focusing on wooing youths in rural areas to enrol into TVET.
"We are confident that the overall number of students in our institutions to reach 60,000 with new intake next month," he said.