English to be made compulsory to pass at public universities

A new policy is on the card to make English a compulsory subject, besides Bahasa Melayu, for students to pass at Malaysia's public universities.

Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, who is also the Education Minister, said he had discussed the matter with Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak about a week ago and the details would be announced later.

"The basic knowledge is not enough for graduates if they don't have the ability to communicate and write in English.

"Companies will have a certain benchmark. They want people who are not only qualified, but people who will be able to be the ambassador, who can communicate to the rest of the world and one of the important requirement is the ability to communicate in English," he said.

Muhyiddin said this at the launching of the Second Cyberjaya Graduate Employability Enabler (CGEE 2), here today.

Meanwhile, Muhyiddin commended Setia Haruman Sdn Bhd chairman Tan Sri Mustapha Kamal who mooted the idea to develop and execute the CGEE program, a talent development program that empowers, train and prepares local graduates, making them employable with high impact companies especially Cyberjaya.

He said CGEE had tremendous potential for making Malaysia a nation of game changers, inventors, and entrepreneurs instead of consumers, with the country, being a resource and diversely rich nation, having much to offer to the rest of the world.

"I was also made to understand that all participants from the pilot project of CGEE in 2013 are gainfully employed as of today, whereby a majority of them are employed in the high impact companies in Cyberjaya and some outside Cyberjaya," he said.

This year's program involved 139 trainees from six universities and Yayasan Sime Darby, who were being trained for some of the multi-national companies such as HSBC, IBM, Tech Mahindra, Emerio and AIG, he added.

Following the success of the CGEE Pilot Project in 2013, Setia Haruman has been allocated RM1.2 million by the Education Ministry to continue the CGEE 2 project this year.