Skills courses: No priority to rural youths

Kota Kinabalu: The Human Resource Development Department (JPSM) does not have a special preference for rural youths when selecting participants for its vocational, commercial and technical training courses.
Stressing this, Resource Development and Information Technology Minister, Datuk Dr Yee Moh Chai, said the department does not give priority to rural applicants.
"JPSM's policy is very clear. We give priority to school dropouts like students aged 14, 15, 16 and 17 whose grades are not good enough for them to go for tertiary education.
"Through the department, we give them opportunity to study by offering various training and courses that certify certain vocational skills," he said.
Yee was commenting on complaints by urban parents that JPSM only gives priority to rural youths to take up its various courses and training.
He said this to Daily Express here after opening a two-day "Expo Kerjaya Belia 2007", in conjunction with the celebration of the State-level Youth Week and Day on Saturday.
The annual event was jointly organised by the Ministry of Youth and Sports, and Resource Development and Information Technology Ministry.
Also present were his wife, Vicky Yee, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, Datuk Abidin Madingkir, Deputy Permanent Secretary 1 of Ministry of Youth and Sports, Datuk Rusmadi Datu Sulai, JPSM Director Rosalind Chew and senior officers of the department.
According to Yee, urban youths have better facilities and, therefore, they have better grades compared to those from rural areas.
"Our approach is to give opportunities mainly to those youths with grades that are not good. If at the end of the day, it turns out that there are more students from rural areas, then it is more because of the fact that the results of rural youths probably satisfy the requirement and thus, it ends up that way.
"We do not want to paint the wrong picture that students from rural areas are bad and poor. Of course that is not true because our aim is to help those youths who are not doing well in their studies. In fact, if applicants come from urban areas and they satisfy the requirement, we still take them" he stressed.
In terms of geographical representation, Yee said the rural area in Sabah is very big compared to urban areas and thus there is bound to be a bigger portion of the participants coming from rural areas.
Earlier in his speech, Yee said efforts to develop human capital must be continuous in order to achieve the national aim of Vision 2020 and be at par with other developed countries.