THE government is confident that the unemployment rate will be kept in check with the Targeted Wage Subsidy Programme, said M. Saravanan.

The human resources minister said, as it stands, the unemployment rate has decreased to 4.9% in June from a record high of 5.3% a month earlier.

“With an additional RM2.4 billion in subsidies as announced by the prime minister, the unemployment numbers will not grow,” he told reporters this morning.

Putrajaya introduced the Targeted Wage Subsidy Programme under the Prihatin Supplementary Initiative Package (Kita Prihatin).

The programme is expected to benefit 1.3 million affected workers and estimated to involve RM2.4 billion, Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin announced on September 23. 

Last month, Saravanan expressed concerns that the number of job seekers in the country could rise to one million.

The increase was due to the additional 350,000 fresh graduates and 200,000 Malaysians returning from abroad.

“That was just an estimation based in May. When I say it was going to go one million by year-end, there were no subsidies, it was purely based on the market,” he said today.

Currently, with all the measures in subsidies, hiring incentives, upscaling and rescaling, the human resource minister is confident that unemployment will not go beyond one million. – October 1, 2020.