KOTA KINABALU – Energy company Kibing Solar is facing challenges in attaining suitable manpower in Sabah as it looks to build a solar plant in the state in November.
Sabah Industrial Development and Entrepreneurship Minister Phoong Jin Zhe said this issue is not due to a lack of skilled workers among Sabahans, but rather their migration to other parts of Malaysia or elsewhere.
“Sabahans flee to places like the peninsula because there are no jobs for them here.
“We are (now) looking for semi and highly skilled workers.
“Sabah actually has many talents. It is just that they are not in Sabah. This is a mismatch. “They are working elsewhere. They are in Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Australia,” he told The Vibes during his visit to the Kibing Solar plant site here today.
The Luyang assemblyman from DAP said he had also carried out recruitment exercises twice in his constituency, but it was difficult to find the right manpower to fill in the vacancies.
He said the lack of qualifications is one of the main problems.
“I plan to do some outreach. At this stage, it is still a concept. I have not discussed it with the relevant departments yet. I still need to analyse whether it is practical.
“If there is a lack of manpower here, I need to get them to return to Sabah. I believe some of them want to come home to work,” he said.
Kibing Solar, which is located at the Kota Kinabalu Industrial Park, currently hires 556 employees, of which 506 are locals.
The firm will need a total of 1,808 employees in the future, including 1,627 locals.
The Kibing Solar Group is a Chinese-funded corporation that has invested four billion yuan (around RM2.5 billion) in two factories in Sabah, which are the SBH Kibing Solar and SBH Kibing Silicon Kudat facilities.
Sabah chief minister Datuk Seri Hajiji Noor previously said there are over 200,000 Sabahans working in the peninsula, while tens of thousands more are believed to be working abroad.
The brain drain is largely attributed to low wages and lack of skilled jobs.
Deputy Human Resources Minister Mustapha Sakmud had also noted that Sabah is heavily reliant on migrant workers, saying the increasing unemployment rate in the state has largely been caused by a void in sectors that are largely dominated by foreigners.
Mustapha also said the situation became more evident during the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020. – The Vibes, May 12, 2023
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