IPOH, April 7 — Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail wants overlaps in Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) provided by various ministries to be streamlined for the system to be more effective.

She said based on the existing structure, there were six ministries implementing TVET according to their respective systems, namely the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Human Resources, Ministry of Youth and Sports, Ministry of Agriculture and Agro-based Industry, Ministry of Rural Development, and Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development.

"The overlapping of education systems, certification, development funding constraints, and the uncertainty faced TVET graduates are among the challenges which need to be addressed and resolved,” she said when officiating the Golden Jubilee celebration of Malaysian polytechnics at Politeknik Ungku Omar (PUO) here today.

Deputy Education Minister Teo Nie Ching was also present.

PUO was selected as the celebration venue as it is the first polytechnic in the country, formed in 1969.

Dr Wan Azizah said she hoped the new TVET Supervisory Committee announced by Education Minister Dr Maszlee Malik in November last year could help solve the issue.

"The committee is expected to implement coordination and rationalisation covering governance, branding, quality, industrialisation and financing,” she said.

The Women, Family and Community Development Minister added that industry players should also be more involved in the process for it to succeed.

"Industries should always communicate with TVET institutions regarding the needs of the workforce to avoid a mismatch between the demand and supply in the job market.

"I suggest that polytechnics continue to strengthen collaboration with industries through the ‘teaching factory’ concept by bringing in more industry engagement into polytechnics in various fields,” she said, adding that the concept would involve elements such as apprenticeship, work-based learning and ‘learn and earn’. — Bernama