24,000 Malaysians laid off

24,000 Malaysians laid off

KUALA LUMPUR (AP): About 24,000 Malaysians have lost their
jobs in the first eight months of this year, mostly due to the
drying up of U.S. demand for electronics exports, news reports
said Monday.

Human Resources Minister Fong Chan Onn said that 18,000 people
were laid off in the electronics manufacturing sector, but the
retrenchments were stabilizing in the third quarter of 2001.

Fong, quoted by The Star and Sun newspapers, said that the
government could train these workers for jobs in other sectors.
He said there were about 85,000 job vacancies in the agriculture
and manufacturing sectors.

There are 9 million workers in Malaysia, a Southeast Asian
nation of 23 million people. About 2.5 million people work in the
manufacturing sector.

The U.S. is Malaysia's largest trading partner. U.S. demand
for electronic products and components, Malaysia's largest
export, helped lift the country out of the 1997-98 Asian economic
crisis.