KOTA KINABALU: Usukan assemblyman Datuk Seri Salleh Said Keruak today said Sabah's workforce need to swiftly adapt to technological advancements to ensure their competence.
He said the rapidly developing artificial intelligence (AI) technology is poised to replace various job categories in the future.
"AI technology is great because it has the ability to train and relearn from all the feedback it gets from human input.
"Because of this, AI will rapidly develop after improving itself. Therefore, I believe that our human capital should also emulate and learn from that attitude - that is, always find a way to retrain or relearn," he said when debating the 2024 state budget at the State Legislative Assembly sitting.
He said the state government should further empower state-owned higher education institutions by giving bigger allocations to plan and explore new fields for quality human capital.
As for the brain drain issue, Salleh said many highly skilled workers have migrated to work in Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Penang, Johor, Singapore and Australia.
Data from the Human Resources Ministry reported 45,900 Sabahans migrated out of the state in 2020.
"This is a big human capital problem that needs to be dealt with immediately because it affects our interests in any investment that takes place in this state," he said.
For example, he said the giant company from China, Kibing Solar Group has invested approximately RM2.5 billion to build two factories in Sabah – SBH Kibing Solar and SBH Kibing Silicon Kudat.
"They currently employ 556 workers (506 local people) and will need as many as 1,808 workers in the future (where the quota of 1,627 is available for local people)," said Salleh.
On job mismatch issues, he said despite the state having vocational schools to universities, surprisingly the unemployment rate of 7.7 per cent or 169,800 people in Sabah.
"Therefore, I welcome any action by the state government that can create a platform where the main stakeholders can discuss more productively to find solutions together: state government, institutions of higher education and also employers and employees."