Construction skilled labour shortage the challenges in Malaysian construction sector

Abstract

Construction skilled shortage workers have become worldwide issue. It also becomes the greatest challenge facing Malaysian construction industry. Moreover, participation by local workforce is not very encouraging and there’s understood that skilled workers produced from vocational training were not meeting industry’s needs. Some of them left construction sector even after undergo training from construction training institutions. Malaysian construction has problems in the ability to get the source of labour as well as retained skill people and has to depend on foreign worker to respond to the high demand of skilled workers due to rapid development in Malaysia and poor participation from local people. This paper explores on construction skilled shortage issue in Malaysia and how serious it is. Discussion of the paper will be on initiatives taken to overcome this issue by introduced technical and vocational skills training and education in Malaysia such as National Occupational Skills Standards (NOSS) and National Dual Training System (NDTS). Those initiatives will be discussed and compared. Moreover, success factor of dual system will also be discussed which are based from other country that successfully implement dual system. Last but not least, reasons of local reluctant to join or work in construction sector will be explained. Some strategy to attract local’s participant to join construction industry will be discussed.