AUTOMATION will soon make millions of low-skilled jobs – from cashiers and machine operators to waiters and drivers – redundant across Southeast Asia, said experts today, warning the region to upskill fast or face huge employment problems.

The topic took centre stage at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Hanoi, where warnings abounded that countries, including Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand, where manufacturing has driven gross domestic product and employed millions, would be among the worst affected.

In stark comments, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc told the forum that technology could spell doom for the “Asian factory model” of growth, which has driven his country in recent years.

While richer economies, such as Japan and Singapore, have embraced so-called “disruptive technologies”, poorer manufacturing hubs are not yet equipped to adapt to the rapid change driven by automation.

But, they may soon have no choice.

According to a study by Cisco and Oxford Economics released today at WEF, some 6.6 million jobs in Southeast Asia are likely to become “redundant” within a decade due to new tech.

To head off crisis among low-skilled workers, whose economic aspirations have changed in step with their incomes, Asean countries must act fast to educate their workforce, warned delegates.

“The Asean region has probably got a window of about 10 years, during which it has to transition into something more higher-value-added,” Justin Wood, a WEF executive member, told AFP.

“If they haven’t taken the right decisions by the end of 10 years, then they will not be globally competitive at all.”

The hardest hit would be “jobs that focus on routine tasks – including cashiers, typists, machine operators and clerks”, and so, were at high risk of automation, Phu Huynh, of the International Labour Organisation, told AFP.

“In Southeast Asia, these jobs are often filled by women and workers with lower qualifications, and they, in particular, are highly vulnerable.” – AFP, September 12, 2018.