PM urges companies to give interns reasonable allowance

However, he said the government would not set any fixed rates of payment because industrial training was not compulsory.

"We understand that internship is not a regular job but just an opportunity for early exposure to work but still we should give some allowance to cover transport and food expenditure.

"When I was the opposition leader in Parliament previously, I also hired interns for the office with the additional RM1,800 allowance given by the then government. I had to seek funds to pay at least RM1,000 to the interns then," said Anwar.

He said this at a ceremony to launch the Capital Market Graduate Programme of the Securities Commission Malaysia (SC) here today. Also present was Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin.

On CMGP, the prime minister said it is a platform providing training for 9,000 prospective graduates to get work exposure in the capital markets, with 600 of them guaranteed jobs at the end of the three-year programme.

He said CMGP is in line with the MADANI aspiration as it provides opportunities for enhancing skills and knowledge in the capital markets among young graduates.

"This is an interesting matter as it involves only one field. In other fields we spend around RM6.7 billion a year on the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) programme, which is a success with 95 per cent getting jobs but the problem is that the salary is still not more than RM2,000.

"What steps have we taken? Big companies should fully or partly take over TVET. For example, Proton has been asked to take over TVET in Pekan (Pahang) and several other companies will be asked to do the same," Anwar said.

He said the government believed that the early preparations done by the Education Ministry, and Rural and Regional Development Ministry and several other ministries related to youths were efforts aimed at ensuring efficiency in the TVET field.