PUTRAJAYA: The government will focus on the implementation of the Digital Education Policy with three main objectives which include creating a digitally-fluent generation capable of mastering digital literacy and skills as well as producing innovations using digital technology.

Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said the policy also aimed at improving the competency and professional development of stakeholders related to leadership as well as the integration of digital technology in education.

"The third objective is closing the digital gap to produce responsible and functioning citizens in a knowledge virtue-based society," he said in his One-Year Malaysia Prihatin Keynote Address in conjunction with his first anniversary in leading the Malaysian government.

Present were Cabinet ministers including Senior Minister of International Trade and Industry Datuk Seri Mohamed Azmin Ali; Senior Minister of Defence Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob; Senior Minister of Works Datuk Seri Fadillah Yusof and Senior Minister of Education Datuk Dr Radzi Jidin, as well as heads of government departments.

Muhyiddin stressed that the Digital Education Policy is a step forward to help create a digitally-fluent generation and at the same time boost the quality of national education to be among the best in the world.

In his speech, the Prime Minister also said that the National Employment Council (NEC) set up by the government has set a target to create 500,000 thousand job opportunities for the people this year.

For that, he said the government through the Social Security Organisation (Socso) is in the midst of implementing the PENJANA Kerjaya 2.0 programme and improving the MYFutureJobs portal to encourage employers to hire and train new workers which had also seen 161,603 job seekers have been placed in new jobs over the past year.

“As of Feb 26 this year, a total of 25,648 people had been hired, and there are still 243,892 vacancies available for job seekers, 143,320 of which are through MyFutureJobs portal,” he said.

Admitting that the COVID-19 pandemic had given a huge impact to the unemployment rate in the country, Muhyiddin said 107,024 cases of retrenchment were reported last year, while for this year, 14,273 cases were reported as of Feb 21.

-- BERNAMA