IT'S dirty, difficult and dangerous but somebody has got to do it, and in Malaysia, our contractors prefer to rely on foreign workers.

The cost factor aside, many industry players say they just can't seem to find local workers to do the job, especially in wet trades such as bricklaying, plastering, tiling, carpentry and concreting.

These all-important wet trades are monopolised by foreign workers and only about three per cent are local guys, according to estimates from Master Builders Association Malaysia.

This is despite the Construction Industry Development Board's (CIDB) claim that it has trained at least some 905,195 locals since 1997 to check the influx of foreign workers and meet the needs of the construction industry.

But a look at the CIDB statistics show that the majority -- 761,231 -- were just given induction courses on safety, while 40,243 only went to CIDB for accreditation of their skills without undergoing any training. A further 12,390 underwent courses on continuous professional development where they studied management theories.
So up until December 2007, only about 90,325 people received skills training. And of these, only a fraction -- some 9,108 -- were trained for the wet trade.

And most of them were school leavers who were persuaded or forced by their parents to do it when they enrolled for CIDB's Youth Skills Training programme.

"Frankly, we still have not had the chance to employ any of these (wet trade) CIDB workers because we don't know where they are," said Malay Contractors Association secretary-general Datuk Othman Abu Bakar.



But for those who have managed to employ some of these workers, their training is dubious.

"They couldn't take it. They just upped and left after a week or two because they couldn't stand working under the hot sun," said Master Builders president Ng Kee Leen.

The problem with them, said Ng, was that they were trained in sheltered and air-conditioned rooms -- that's why most can't take the heat when they work at a real construction site.

It doesn't help that the trainers themselves were not from the industry, said Tang Juang Yew, executive director of Al-Ambia Sdn Bhd.

"CIDB trained them to be trainers. They are not aware of what is going on in the industry, the problems that would be faced by the trainees and what the job-site sequence is like. It's true, the workers trained by CIDB are not that good," said Tang.

IJM Corporation director Tan Gim Foo said another reason why the young workers don't stay in the industry was because the training provided by CIDB was only at certificate level and very basic. It is only sufficient for them to be low-level tradesmen -- to follow orders and carry out routine jobs.

"They don't see a chance to progress to higher skill levels, to have a career path, unlike in countries like Australia where the workers can pursue their training up to diploma and degree level, if they're good."

Ironically, the skills training provided by CIDB is based on the syllabi used by the National Occupational Skill Standards that were prepared by industry experts and endorsed by the National Vocational Training Council, said CIDB chief executive Datuk Hamzah Hasan.

"We don't simply teach the boys what we like," said Hamzah.

True, said Ng, but he reiterated that the complaint was not with the syllabi, but with the delivery method employed by the trainers.

"If everyone complains, there's clearly something wrong. The emphasis should be on practical training -- don't shelter them. Let them feel what it's like on site."

Ng, who is also Gamuda Bhd's executive director, said the issue of training had been a sore one for some years as many felt that the levy collected by CIDB from the industry -- totalling several million ringgit a year -- should enable the board to provide better training to meet the shortage of skilled workers in the country.

But Hamzah said that CIDB had started sending the trainees for a one-month on-site training with local construction companies on the completion of their course since late last year. But perhaps the effectiveness of this new measure is yet to be felt.

Real Estate and Housing Developers Association president Ng Seing Liong conceded that "maybe it's true the training is not up to industry expectations".

But Seing Liong, who is also on CIDB's board of directors, added: "We are working towards upgrading the training syllabi. We're also looking into the possibility of twinning up with some institutions of higher learning in Australia."

In the mean time, he said the CIDB was trying to persuade school leavers that the construction industry had a bright future.

To date, the construction industry employed some 320,000 foreign workers, said CIDB senior general manager Megat Kamil Azmi Megat Rus Kamarani. They make up about half of the workforce in the industry and most of them are wet trade workers or general workers doing unskilled work.

"It's hard for us to get students to enrol in the wet trades because of the 3-D factor -- dirty, difficult and dangerous. For value-added trades like electrical work, landscaping and scaffolding, we can get many students.

"So if you don't have the students, you can't expect to replace the foreign workers with locals," he added.

"Once they (local students) graduate, it's not easy for them to join the bigger companies.

"These companies usually have a large foreign-worker base and our workers don't feel comfortable living in the kongsi with them."

Hence, Megat Kamil said, the IBS (industrialised building systems) is the only solution to the problem of foreign workers.

IBS is not new in the Malaysian construction industry -- some industry observers say it's been talked about for over a decade.

It is a construction process that utilises techniques, products, components or building systems which involve prefabricated components like steel structures and pre-cast concrete and on-site installation.

Many developed countries -- where labour is comparably more expensive -- favour IBS because pre-casting components at the factory saves costs, reduces labour and wastage and improves quality through standardisation.

Megat Kamil said the government hoped IBS would help reduce dependence on foreign workers by 30 per cent by 2015.

But most industry people don't think IBS will greatly reduce the number of workers in the industry.

"IBS is taking the problem from a job-site environment to a factory environment," said a senior industry insider.

"Pre-cast means instead of going to the job site to cast, I'm going to the factory to do the casting and then putting them together at the job site.

"So how can you do pre-cast without the wet-trade workers? What is the CIDB talking about?"

He stressed that there's still a lack of skilled local workers because of the mismatch between the training the CIDB provides and industry needs.

"They can say anything they want but the industry dictates what it needs.

"These young boys from the training school think they're great and demand high salaries but they know nuts."

He also asked if the CIDB was training the right people.

"Why force those who're not interested? Why not focus more on upgrading the skills of workers in the industry?"

The CIDB runs six Malaysian construction aca-demies to train local workers.

Four are in the peninsula and one each in Sabah and Sarawak.