By: Fariza Yusuf Subject: Interview Report Interviewee : Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary Date: 6th June

2011 INTRODUCTION I have conducted an interview with Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar al-Bukhary who is one of the richest figure in Malaysia and Asia today with a total wealth up to US$ 2.5 billion. Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar start school in Alor Setar, but when he was 9 years old, he was sent to live with his uncle, Syed Omar in Johor Bahru. He was there from four degrees until the two levels. Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar then returned to his home in Alor Setar and connecting school to five levels in the Saint Michael's School. In fact, Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar who is not well educated and had never learned to university level. However, this does not mean he is not knowledgeable. His family originated from Hadhramaut, Yemen. Before taking the decision settled in Singapore, his father traveled to Central Asia for trade. Next, his father went to Thailand. In the mid 40's, then the father of Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar decided to settle in Alor Setar, Kedah. In 1946, his father got married. Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar has seven siblings and she was the third child. Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar living in impoverished conditions so that the wood house located at Kampung Hutan Keriang not has a bed, table or chair. This resulted in him difficult to analyze. However, each of which occurs that would have wisdom. The situation also prompted him to launch free tuition as a welfare program under the al-Bukhary Foundation which he established to contribute to charity. Currently, 15,000 students benefited from the tuition program. He established the foundation of Al-Bukhary the main project is to provide educational opportunities for smart kids who can not afford. "I had not had the opportunity. Once there are fortune is why I can not help the poor who can go far, "he said, so far as grade five in school. Most of the knowledge acquired through direct experience when he was active in the business world at an early age. Syed Mokhtar is one of those Malays are well known success contributed greatly to the development of the nation.

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UNEMPLOYMENT ISSUES To be fair, Tan Sri also stated that the unemployment rate in Malaysia was last reported at 3 percent in March of 2011. From 1998 until 2010, Malaysia's Unemployment Rate averaged 3.43 percent reaching an historical high of 4.50 percent in March of 1999 and a record low of 2.90 percent in March of 1998. Statistics compiled by the Human Resources Ministry showed a cumulative figure of 38,732 workers retrenched due to the economic crisis. Of the total, 29,712 were permanently terminated while 9,020 accepted voluntary separation offers. Obviously the external contributing factor is due to the world economy meltdown. Malaysia as a developing country rely heavily on foreign direct investment (FDI) especially from countries such as Singapore, Americas, Europe, Japan and etc. Most of these FDI are into the manufacturing sector. Many major multinational companies (MNC) in Malaysia have announced layoff plans including factory and office shutdowns to mitigate the impact of the economic slowdown. Since the presence of manufacturing MNCs in Malaysia is significant, the layoff plans contributed to the increase of the unemployment rate. Internally, there are several factors that contributed to the increase of the unemployment rate such as job competition & matching. Malaysia is a heaven for job seekers who are not so particular on what job is available. As long there is a job, they will just take it. This is very true for foreigners especially from less developed countries such as Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nepal, Myanmar and many more. Their presence have created a competitive job market in Malaysia especially among the blue collar jobs where most of employers prefer to hire these foreigners rather than Malaysian because of relatively cheaper labour cost and easier to manage. In addition, 40,662 workers had their pay reduced while 4,112 were temporarily laid off. In his statement earlier, Tan Sri said that although downsizing in the current downturn was not as severe as during the 1997/98 Asian financial crisis when 84,000 Malaysians had lost their jobs, it was still a cause for concern.We need to do something by coming up with creative action to minimize the impact of this current crisis, he said. The Malaysian Government, through various tripartite forums, have constantly highlighted and promoted the importance of continual improvement and learning. Workers must
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be actively involved in upgrading their knowledge and skills. Unemployment is a problem that we have to control through effective labour management and human resource policies. The negative impact of globalization and external shocks of the international economic system must be mitigated by prudent government interventions. Consequently, underpinning the efforts to combat unemployment is the capacity of the workforce to compete through increasing productivity and working in harmony with the other factors of production. The strategic thrust in addressing unemployment is economic growth and development He also add that the government, would work together with talent agencies and other MNCs to provide training for graduates and undergraduates wishing to become entrepreneurs or in actively seeking for a secure job opportunities. From this year, the said programs plans to offer Graduate Entrepreneurship and Management Basic Training programs based on several business clusters that have the potential to be promoted. ALTERNATIVE SOLLUTIONS Honestly, to me there are many possible alternatives can be derive if we were continuously and actively concern on this matter. For example both government and private sectors can develop a program that can attract those unemployed individuals such as nowadays we heard about the GEMS (Graduate Employability Management Scheme) or Management Training Program where unemployed individuals will be selected to undergo in-house training for about two months and ten months on the job training. The Graduate Employability Management Scheme (GEMS) is a government capacity building initiative to equip unemployed graduates with commercially useful skills and experiences that would enhance their employment opportunities. It is part of the RM7 billion stimulus package announced by the then Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, Dato Sri Mohd. Najib Razak (who is currently the Prime Minister), in order to keep the economy of the country ticking. GEMS is expected to train up to 12,000 graduates over a period of two (2) years. It was a good sign and fantastic news as well. It shows that something has been done to reduce the unemployment figure.

Therefore as someone who is concern to my homeland, I have also develop and implement a similar program to my businesses in providing even larger job opportunities and
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also try to collaborate with most of the GLCs (Government Linked Company) out there in outsourcing those highly potentials and skilled individuals in order to provide them with precious experiences later on.

For your information also, today we have discovered a new alternative on how to overcome these unemployment issues. Maybe it sounds illogical but I can see I will be a good prospect for our nations future ahead. What I mean is that the idea of proposing Mudharabah institution is to give solution for the unemployment problem in Malaysia or all over the world if possible. As in the case of Malaysia, the unemployment problem becomes among the major problems of the crisis. When many firms and companies especially from the manufacturing sector experience abrupt decline of demand from the customers on their products, they have taken immediate action to reduce losses incurred from such problem. As a result, lay-off activities will be exercised by the firms as one of the ways to avoid more losses by reducing the scale of production from numbers of branches toward few of factories continued to be operated. Thus, thousand of labours become unemployed workers and many more are afraid of experiencing the same impact. It has been reported that, in year 2008, almost 33,451 workers were retrenched, compared with 26,417 in 2007. Between October 2008 and until January 25 2009, 13,040 workers were retrenched, including 2,955 foreigners, while 45,000 have been temporary layoff work. Therefore, in tackling this serious issue, we have suggested a proposal on how to solve the unemployment problem through Mudharabah institution. For a first glance, it seems to be illogical and nonsense. How can the financing package like Mudharabah will solve unemployment problem? It does not have any direct relation between financial supports with job opportunities because people want to get job as soon as possible and not financial package which is presumed to be a transient income. Then, the arguments come in to stress that Mudharabah will not directly give people jobs but it helps people to create jobs for him and the rests. The money that received through mudharabah-financing will help someone to open new business and producing new goods for the use of the domestic usages. Now another refutation arises, why do we need to produce more goods by establishing new firms while in fact the problem of the crisis
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is a demand side problem not the supply side problem? Shortly we can say creating more firms from small or medium size enterprise will contribute to increasing demand and not only the supply side

As for that, I believe that we should not only just focus on the profit making activities but also we as one of the economy players need to fulfill the needs towards our social corporate responsibilities because today, stakeholders are also more concern towards other issues than the profit earned solely.

RESPONSE AND REACTION

To me there are many types of unemployment in this world today and most of it has its own criteria and characteristics that made them to occur. The main unemployment type that occurs are the fictional and structural.

Frictional Unemployment This kind of unemployment can best be described as the time taken for individuals to move in between jobs. Suppose Mr. A has been out of job for several months & as such he is looking for a new one. In between, he registered himself as unemployed & entitled himself to claim jobseekers allowance. Sometimes, the dole could act as a strong disincentive for someone to look for job if the claim is high. Also sometimes they took longer than necessarily to look for jobs, is due to imperfect information, not knowing which local firms that offer vacancies. Both these actually worsen the frictional unemployment. Therefore, JobCentres, a government-funded agency (something like Jobstreet) that helps people to look for suitable employment & firms to fill in vacancies. Also the government can cut unemployment benefits, to increase the opportunity costs of staying idle

Structural Unemployment This unemployment which results due to mismatch of skills. The problem is these workers are just too specialized & they may find difficulty to move in between jobs. For instance, a welder is
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displaced by a robot or a nuclear engineer is no longer required in a lab. As for that, government provides incentives to firms to train these employees to make them more marketable for other jobs & also incentives for those unemployed to join the training scheme.

I would say that the route, the path is already there for them out there. So, do grab the chances been provided in order to free themselves from unemployment. Dont be too choosy and just accept whatever opportunity in coming because nowadays the competition is too stiff as every year thousands of graduates passing out either form Public Universities or Private Colleges and actively seeking jobs in the market. For others that maybe the victim of any company retrenchment or regroup, I suggest they can try to apply for any job first even though it is not of what their qualifications are or they also can apply for any other Management Trainee Scheme Programs held by most of the companies today because what I believe is that whatever chances we have we should grab and try to make use of it wisely. There are no such easy ways to be success in this world. If you are require to start again from the very beginning, why not give it a try because gaining knowledge and experience is a continuous learning in our life not only for job activities but also for our living survival in this highly competitive world.

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