KUALA LUMPUR, July 25 — The Perikatan Nasional (PN) administration must be transparent and clear in their policies to address unemployment in the country, PKR president Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has said.
Speaking to reporters in an event in Port Dickson, Anwar urged the government to take responsibility and formulate a clear policy to address unemployment, including explaining how it tabulate and convey the unemployment rate to the public.
“Unemployment has nothing to do a general election. The government must be responsible, they must make their policy clear, they make the [unemployment] figures clear.
“In terms of unemployment, firstly, I view this figure as unrealistic and secondly, those who were given leave without pay, the figures are huge,’’ he said.
A recording of his remarks was made available to Malay Mail.
Anwar pointed out that he had raised the matter in parliament but had received conflicting statements from Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, minister in charge of economic affairs Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed, and Minister for International Trade and Industry, Datuk Seri Mohamed Azmin Ali.
He said the PN administration is more focused in dealing with internal politicking instead of addressing policy matters.
“The government now is focusing on [poltical] stability, more to allocation of government-linked companies. That is more towards focusing on internal politics of PN, instead of policies,’’ he said.
Anwar added that even the Prihatin Stimulus package that was announced by Muhyddin as means to mitigate the economic impact of Covid-19 has not even been tabled in parliament.
Anwar was answering question by the press in regards to Umno veteran Tan Sri Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah who had called for a snap election soon, as unemployment rate would continue to climb unless more investment comes into the country.
The country’s unemployment rate rose to its highest point this year to reach 5.3 per cent in May, with the number of jobless Malaysians also reaching a high of 826,100 that month, the latest official statistics has shown.
The unemployment rate measures the percentage of the unemployed population in the labour force, with the labour force being those aged 15 to 64 and are either employed or unemployed.
