'38,000 Malaysian workers dismissed'

'38,000 Malaysian workers dismissed'

Associated Press, Kuala Lumpur

Around 38,000 people lost their jobs in Malaysia between January and November, many of them in the country's key electronics industry, which has been hard hit by the global slowdown, news reports said Tuesday.

Human Resources Minister Fong Chan Onn said most jobs lost since the start of the year in the electronic production sector, and women workers were the hardest hit.

Electronics and electronic components form more than 50 percent of Malaysia's total exports, and the United States is Malaysia's biggest trading partner.

But the global slowdown this year has caused a slump in demand and a sharp decline in Malaysian exports.

Malaysia acknowledged late last month it has slipped into recession, after gross domestic product shrank 1.3 percent in the third quarter.

Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has launched economic stimulus packages in an effort to encourage local demand.

Fong said there were signs that demand was rising and of a recovery in the electronics sector in the second quarter of 2002.

"Although 38,000 people lost their jobs, there were 130,000 new vacancies reported," in the textile, plastic and food industries, Fong said as reported by the New Straits Times.

Fong said 53 percent of those who had lost their jobs since January were women. "In times of economic downturn, women are vulnerable to retrenchment and we will have to retrain them to acquire other skills," the national Bernama news agency quoted him as saying.

Malaysia had nine million workers, one-third of whom were women.

Fong told Parliament on Tuesday that Malaysia exported 58.6 billion ringgit (US$15.41 billion) worth of electronic and electrical products to the United States in 2000, of total exports worth 76.6 billion ringgit ($20 billion), the national Bernama news agency reported.