IPOH, Aug 8 — The success rate of the Perak government-owned human capital development centre, Pusat Kerjaya Amanjaya (PeKA), was questioned at the State Legislative Assembly sitting today by an exco chairman who felt its numbers do not add up.
State Youth, Sports and Human Capital Development committee chairman Howard Lee Chuan How raised doubts about the success rate of the centre after an updated report on its performance failed to conform with a previous report.
He said a report from PeKA shows that 63,186 out of 69,985 applicants have managed to secure a job via the centre from March 2011 to March 2018.
“The report shows that PeKA has about 90 per cent success rate in finding jobs for the applicants since 2011.
“The question now is whether the 63,186 figure, which is often pointed out, is accurate as the reality is the other way around,” he said in his reply to Pengkalan Hulu assemblyman Datuk Aznel Ibrahim.
Lee said an updated report obtained by the state government from the centre said only 1.6 per cent out of 4,677 people who were registered under the centre were employed from Jan to March this year.
“Only 73 people have managed to get a job via PeKA, while 1,130 people have also managed to get jobs, but not through PeKA.
“The balance 3,474 is still unemployed,” said the Pasir Pinji assemblyman.
Lee said that the reason why the registered applicants could not secure a job was because the programmes organised by PeKA were short-termed and influenced by political interest.
“The programmes were organised based on the instruction from the highest management of PeKA, which in this case are the hired consultants.
“The programmes involve assemblymen and political parties and the cost to organise the programmes such as a career fair is about RM20,000 to RM30,000,” he said.
“Career fair is not the main method to solve unemployment issues as the employers who were present for the programmes only collected resumes and did not offer jobs on the spot,” added Lee.
Earlier this month the Perak government alleged a consultant firm, which was appointed by PeKA in 2012, provided false information on several issues, including the number of yearly job placements in the state.
The state also claimed that the company allegedly shirked payments to the Employees Provident Fund, Telekom Malaysia (TM) bills and rental of its office in the Amanjaya Terminal here — which ran into hundreds of thousands of ringgit.
On Aug 3, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission detained a 43-year-old former chief executive officer of PeKA to assist investigations into fraud allegations involving the centre.
