There can be Good News in Bad News

“What nonsense are you writing?” you may be thinking.
No I did not have an overdose of Shandy, my usual alcoholic drink of once a fortnight frequency.

I refer to the NST report that our skilled workers are very welcome in Singapore and 40000 of them commute from Johor Baru. If we guess that each of them earns about S$2000 per month and spends S$700 in Singapore that means

S$1300 times 2.2 times 40000 gets spent in Johor Baru each month or about RM114 million helps to support the Johor economy.

As for the training courses, this is validation that we are doing something right and maybe some of those under-qualified being pushed into universities should enroll for such courses.
The number of 20,000 per annum is just too little and should be doubled every two years for the next six years so that we can produce

40,000 in 2007
80,000 in 2009
160,000 in 2011

This will enable factories to employ more technical level staff and reduce our over-dependence on foreign workers.

Workers who are trained at technician level are in great demand and they can also study further courses to upgrade to diploma and even degree level.

This is much better than producing graduates that no one wants to employ. These disgruntled graduates can become fertile soil for terror networks to infiltrate.

photo: Australia outback