Not true 50,000 workers facing retrenchment - Mustapa

The Ministry of International Trade and Industry has denied claims that 50,000 workers will lose their jobs in 2018 primarily due to the rising cost of doing business.

Its minister Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed today said the ministry views most of those retrenched workers will be reemployed by new and expanding businesses and that the total number of retrenchments this year may not be as high as claimed.

According to Mustapa, most workers who have been retrenched were rehired by new and existing companies as they expand to meet increasing demand.

He also said that a large percentage of the retrenched workers from companies such as Seagate, Hitachi Global Storage Technology and Rubicon in Pulau Pinang were rehired by other expanding firms such as Keysight, Inari, HP, Osram and Infineon.

The three-year period between 2014 and 2016, new manufacturing projects implemented have created over 153,000 jobs, said Mustapa.

An additional 32,700 jobs in the manufacturing sector will be created from the investment secured in the period of Jan to Sept 2017.

A number of new investments and expansion undertaken by companies last year such as Broadcom and Osram in Penang, Konica Minolta in Melaka, Infineon in Kedah, Roland and IKEA in Selangor, as well as BMW in Johor, among others, have created more job opportunities in the country.

Oil and gas companies are also starting to hire again, especially in the upstream and offshore businesses as they seek to capitalise on the new found high oil price in recent times.