Risky business of overseas ‘jobs’ , Don’t get conned, Malaysians warned !

Scam Job Offers: How to determine if a job offer is scam

The promise of lucrative salaries are luring many Malaysians abroad but most are scams leaving these job seekers cheated and in need of rescuing.

The promise of lucrative salaries are luring many Malaysians abroad but most are scams leaving these job seekers cheated and in need of rescuing.

IT is ironic that at the same time there is an ongoing crackdown on illegal immigrants in the country, Malaysians are being detained in countries like Cambodia, South Korea and even Liberia.

These detentions have increased in frequency to the extent that Wisma Putra has issued a warning to “remind all Malaysians to be cautious of opportunities offered in foreign countries, and always verify the prospective employers”.

It used to be that foreigners (read: South Asians and South-East Asians) were drawn to Malaysia’s booming property and service sectors for better paying jobs.

They still are. On Monday, as part of operations codenamed Ops Mega 3.0, some 73 illegal immigrants, from Bangladesh, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar, were held by the police under the Immigration Act. These foreigners were working at the Selangor wholesale market without proper work documents.

But how times have changed. The roles appear to be reversed, the Malaysians that have been detained overseas were for exactly similar offences – no proper work documents.

This time last year, The Star’s Bahasa Malaysia news portal mStar Online revealed that there was an estimated 5,000 Malaysians working and staying illegally in South Korea. The less fortunate ones were forced to live like refugees, always on the run from the authorities.

These Malaysians were lured by job advertisements that claimed they could earn a lucrative living in the land of K-pop. They paid recruitment agents thousands of ringgit in fees and entered South Korea with tourist visas.

Some of these Malaysians interviewed by mStar spoke about the hardships they faced including poor living conditions, tough working environment and employers holding back their salaries.

The Korean police and its justice ministry have begun cracking down on these illegals, starting from last month. Those without proper documentation will be immediately deported.

But Malaysians never learn. Two recent cases highlight the need for employees to be more vigilant and for the authorities to crack down on fly-by-night recruitment agents.

First, the case of the 47 Sarawa­kians who were detained in Cambo­dia since Dec 11 last year on charges of cheating and initiating and carrying out illegal online gambling activities.

It was reported that the Malay­sians were promised jobs with lucrative salaries up to US$1,500 (RM6,100), and only found out that it was a scam when they arrived in Cambodia.

Their plight was highlighted in local media, and Wisma Putra, other leaders and representatives from Sarawak flew to Cambodia to secure their release. They were finally released on Feb 15.

The second recent case also involved Sarawakians. Eight of them were left stranded in Monro­via, Liberia, since Feb 4 after being offered logging jobs with wages up to RM9,000.

They were left stranded in the African nation without any money, and managed to survive because they were given rice by Malaysians working with Sime Darby in Liberia.

“If not for the rice, we would definitely be dead,” said Aji Surau, 39, after arriving at KL International Airport on March 4, one month after their ordeal.

He said they were abandoned in a house with no water and electricity and even resorted to eating papaya leaves to survive.

All these cases have one thing in common – dodgy job syndicates.

These unscrupulous agents rake in thousands of ringgit by promising the world to gullible locals.

“I want to advise Malaysians to be cautious when getting job offers overseas because this is not the first such incident.

“Check with the authorities concerned, especially the Malaysian representatives, whether the company offering the job is legitimate or not,” Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah told reporters after the Liberian detainees were released.

The Cambodia and Liberia incidences appear to be genuine cases of people who were promised legitimate work contracts. But for every genuine case, there are five others who play the “victim” card.

In some countries where Malay­sians are caught working illegally, they claimed that they were lured there with guarantees of proper employment with legal documentation. But the reality is that these people went overseas on tourist visas with the sole intention of getting a job, by whatever means.

Did you know that Malaysians are the worst visa abusers when it comes to overstaying in Australia?

According to a 2018 report from the Australian Department of Home Affairs, there were 62,000 people overstaying their visas and living illegally in Australia, with Malay­sians making up the largest number. Between 2016 and 2017 alone, 10,000 Malaysians had overstayed!

As a result of this blatant abuse of tourist visas, the Australian authorities have made it harder for Malaysians to enter the country.

Australian-based news site news.com.au quoted a source from the Malaysian mission in Australia as saying that more Malaysians are being turned away at the airports, despite having the necessary visas approved before departure.

These visa scams are not only giving us a bad name, but also making it more difficult for genuine Malay­sian tourists to visit Australia.

The latest “tourist” scam is via social media where syndicates are luring people to become drug mules by offering them cash and opportunities to go for tours abroad. But beware, if you’re caught deportation is the least of your problems. A stiff jail sentence or even the death penalty awaits.

By Brian Martin On your side

Brian Martin

Brian Martin, executive editor of The Star, would like to come clean. He has vested interest in the proposed assessment rate hike since he’s a resident of Kuala Lumpur.



Don’t get conned, Malaysians warned

 Labour Dept: Only use services of licensed private recruitment companies

From “interviews” in coffeeshops to being persuaded to work in war-torn countries with lucrative salaries, Malaysians are being increasingly conned into travelling to work overseas, only to run into trouble.

This has prompted the Labour Department to advise those wishing to work overseas to only use the services of licensed private recruitment companies.

Seeking the services of licensed private job agencies under the Labour Department as provided in the Private Employment Agencies Act (1981) would help one avoid being conned or exploited by unscrupulous agents or employers overseas, it said.

“There’s a possibility that high salaries offered has become a pull factor in enticing Malaysians to work overseas.

“The Labour Department is always carrying out enforcement activities under the Private Employment Agencies Act (1981) to monitor the activities of illegitimate agencies and agents,” it said in response to questions by The Star.

The Labour Department, which is under the Human Resources Minis­try, was responding to queries about the increasing media reports highlighting Malaysians being conned in overseas jobs.

While the Labour Department said it did not have any records on the numbers of overseas job scam cases affecting Malaysians, it encou­rages those with information on such cases to come forward.

“We have not received reports on job scams. However, victims can file a report with the Labour Department, including in Sabah and Sarawak for any job scams issues so that we can act accordingly,” it said.

MCA Public Services and Com­plaints Department head Datuk Seri Michael Chong said many of the job scam victims he encountered were enticed to work in Afri­can or Middle Eastern countries.

“Many of these countries are war-torn and so these ‘employment agents’ would tell the victims there is a lot of construction work to rebuild the country.

“These victims are mostly semi-skilled or unskilled workers who are attracted to the salaries which are supposedly from RM6,000 to RM10,000 a month,” he said.

However, he said, these victims were then cheated out of their salaries and left with little to no protection in a foreign country.

To stop these scams from occurring, he urged those interested to find work to carry out background checks on the company.

“You must make sure that there is an incorporated company so if anything happened to you, there is a company we could look for,” he said.

He also advised people to be wary if the salary offered is too good to be true, or if the job interview doesn’t take place in the company’s office.

“There are some ‘interviews’ which are even being conducted in coffeeshops,” said Chong.

He said he noticed more of such cases in recent years, especially as many Malaysians want to go overseas to eke out a livelihood.

Last December, 47 Malaysians were detained in Cambodia for being involved in illegal online gambling activities.

It was reported that they were offered jobs with lucrative salaries but had only found out that it was a scam when they arrived in Cam­bo­dia.

In February, eight Sarawakians were stranded in Liberia after allegedly being cheated by an employment syndicate.

The Malaysian Em­­ployers Fede­ration called for a dedicated government agency to help protect the welfare of Malaysians who go overseas to work.

Its executive director Datuk Sham­suddin Bardan said this was to prevent them from being exploited and falling prey to illegal job syndicates.

“We have more than one million Malaysians working overseas but we have no proper body to monitor their affairs,” he said yesterday.

He noted that the Filippine government would ensure that their citizens who are sent overseas to work are properly trained and that they are employed by a legitimate company.

“The Filipino government would ensure that there is a proper document signed between the employer and agent, and if anything happens to the worker, the agent will be held responsible.

“We should emulate the Philip­pines to help our workers who aspire to work overseas,” he said.

However, he said the grim reality was that many Malaysian workers were enticed to work overseas because of the attractive pay, even if the details surrounding the employment were unclear.

“Employees are attracted to the higher wages offered in those countries, where the income promised triple or even quadruple what they are earning in Malaysia – and most of these jobs do not require high level of skills such as picking fruit.

“A difficult economic situation in Malaysia with the rising costs of living also contribute to the problem.

“We must re-look at our employment practices, how we remunerate our employees and develop our talent,” he said.

Malaysian Trades Union Congress secretary-general J. Solomon agreed that better policies and enforcement were needed to monitor the outflow of Malaysian workers to other countries.

“The authorities and their relevant agencies need to know where Malaysian workers are going when they travel overseas,” he said.

He said tighter enforcement was especially needed as more false job advertisements were disseminated easily on various social media platforms.

“It is high time the Cabinet review and encourage companies to comply with minimum wage level,” he said.

The low wages in Malaysia and the stigma of 3D (dirty, dangerous and difficult) jobs cause Malaysians to desperately seek employment outside the country, he added.

“These factors are causing Malay­sians to go elsewhere to find alternative sources of income,” he said.

By Fatimah zainal and Clarissa Chung The Star


Related news:

Singapore recruitment: beware of scammers - HeadHunt Singapore

 

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What Should I Do If I Am a Job Scam Victim? | Randstad Singapore

 

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Risky business of overseas ‘jobs’ , Don’t get conned, Malaysians warned !

Scam Job Offers: How to determine if a job offer is scam

The promise of lucrative salaries are luring many Malaysians abroad but most are scams leaving these job seekers cheated and in need of rescuing.

The promise of lucrative salaries are luring many Malaysians abroad but most are scams leaving these job seekers cheated and in need of rescuing.

IT is ironic that at the same time there is an ongoing crackdown on illegal immigrants in the country, Malaysians are being detained in countries like Cambodia, South Korea and even Liberia.

These detentions have increased in frequency to the extent that Wisma Putra has issued a warning to “remind all Malaysians to be cautious of opportunities offered in foreign countries, and always verify the prospective employers”.

It used to be that foreigners (read: South Asians and South-East Asians) were drawn to Malaysia’s booming property and service sectors for better paying jobs.

They still are. On Monday, as part of operations codenamed Ops Mega 3.0, some 73 illegal immigrants, from Bangladesh, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar, were held by the police under the Immigration Act. These foreigners were working at the Selangor wholesale market without proper work documents.

But how times have changed. The roles appear to be reversed, the Malaysians that have been detained overseas were for exactly similar offences – no proper work documents.

This time last year, The Star’s Bahasa Malaysia news portal mStar Online revealed that there was an estimated 5,000 Malaysians working and staying illegally in South Korea. The less fortunate ones were forced to live like refugees, always on the run from the authorities.

These Malaysians were lured by job advertisements that claimed they could earn a lucrative living in the land of K-pop. They paid recruitment agents thousands of ringgit in fees and entered South Korea with tourist visas.

Some of these Malaysians interviewed by mStar spoke about the hardships they faced including poor living conditions, tough working environment and employers holding back their salaries.

The Korean police and its justice ministry have begun cracking down on these illegals, starting from last month. Those without proper documentation will be immediately deported.

But Malaysians never learn. Two recent cases highlight the need for employees to be more vigilant and for the authorities to crack down on fly-by-night recruitment agents.

First, the case of the 47 Sarawa­kians who were detained in Cambo­dia since Dec 11 last year on charges of cheating and initiating and carrying out illegal online gambling activities.

It was reported that the Malay­sians were promised jobs with lucrative salaries up to US$1,500 (RM6,100), and only found out that it was a scam when they arrived in Cambodia.

Their plight was highlighted in local media, and Wisma Putra, other leaders and representatives from Sarawak flew to Cambodia to secure their release. They were finally released on Feb 15.

The second recent case also involved Sarawakians. Eight of them were left stranded in Monro­via, Liberia, since Feb 4 after being offered logging jobs with wages up to RM9,000.

They were left stranded in the African nation without any money, and managed to survive because they were given rice by Malaysians working with Sime Darby in Liberia.

“If not for the rice, we would definitely be dead,” said Aji Surau, 39, after arriving at KL International Airport on March 4, one month after their ordeal.

He said they were abandoned in a house with no water and electricity and even resorted to eating papaya leaves to survive.

All these cases have one thing in common – dodgy job syndicates.

These unscrupulous agents rake in thousands of ringgit by promising the world to gullible locals.

“I want to advise Malaysians to be cautious when getting job offers overseas because this is not the first such incident.

“Check with the authorities concerned, especially the Malaysian representatives, whether the company offering the job is legitimate or not,” Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah told reporters after the Liberian detainees were released.

The Cambodia and Liberia incidences appear to be genuine cases of people who were promised legitimate work contracts. But for every genuine case, there are five others who play the “victim” card.

In some countries where Malay­sians are caught working illegally, they claimed that they were lured there with guarantees of proper employment with legal documentation. But the reality is that these people went overseas on tourist visas with the sole intention of getting a job, by whatever means.

Did you know that Malaysians are the worst visa abusers when it comes to overstaying in Australia?

According to a 2018 report from the Australian Department of Home Affairs, there were 62,000 people overstaying their visas and living illegally in Australia, with Malay­sians making up the largest number. Between 2016 and 2017 alone, 10,000 Malaysians had overstayed!

As a result of this blatant abuse of tourist visas, the Australian authorities have made it harder for Malaysians to enter the country.

Australian-based news site news.com.au quoted a source from the Malaysian mission in Australia as saying that more Malaysians are being turned away at the airports, despite having the necessary visas approved before departure.

These visa scams are not only giving us a bad name, but also making it more difficult for genuine Malay­sian tourists to visit Australia.

The latest “tourist” scam is via social media where syndicates are luring people to become drug mules by offering them cash and opportunities to go for tours abroad. But beware, if you’re caught deportation is the least of your problems. A stiff jail sentence or even the death penalty awaits.

By Brian Martin On your side

Brian Martin

Brian Martin, executive editor of The Star, would like to come clean. He has vested interest in the proposed assessment rate hike since he’s a resident of Kuala Lumpur.



Don’t get conned, Malaysians warned

 Labour Dept: Only use services of licensed private recruitment companies

From “interviews” in coffeeshops to being persuaded to work in war-torn countries with lucrative salaries, Malaysians are being increasingly conned into travelling to work overseas, only to run into trouble.

This has prompted the Labour Department to advise those wishing to work overseas to only use the services of licensed private recruitment companies.

Seeking the services of licensed private job agencies under the Labour Department as provided in the Private Employment Agencies Act (1981) would help one avoid being conned or exploited by unscrupulous agents or employers overseas, it said.

“There’s a possibility that high salaries offered has become a pull factor in enticing Malaysians to work overseas.

“The Labour Department is always carrying out enforcement activities under the Private Employment Agencies Act (1981) to monitor the activities of illegitimate agencies and agents,” it said in response to questions by The Star.

The Labour Department, which is under the Human Resources Minis­try, was responding to queries about the increasing media reports highlighting Malaysians being conned in overseas jobs.

While the Labour Department said it did not have any records on the numbers of overseas job scam cases affecting Malaysians, it encou­rages those with information on such cases to come forward.

“We have not received reports on job scams. However, victims can file a report with the Labour Department, including in Sabah and Sarawak for any job scams issues so that we can act accordingly,” it said.

MCA Public Services and Com­plaints Department head Datuk Seri Michael Chong said many of the job scam victims he encountered were enticed to work in Afri­can or Middle Eastern countries.

“Many of these countries are war-torn and so these ‘employment agents’ would tell the victims there is a lot of construction work to rebuild the country.

“These victims are mostly semi-skilled or unskilled workers who are attracted to the salaries which are supposedly from RM6,000 to RM10,000 a month,” he said.

However, he said, these victims were then cheated out of their salaries and left with little to no protection in a foreign country.

To stop these scams from occurring, he urged those interested to find work to carry out background checks on the company.

“You must make sure that there is an incorporated company so if anything happened to you, there is a company we could look for,” he said.

He also advised people to be wary if the salary offered is too good to be true, or if the job interview doesn’t take place in the company’s office.

“There are some ‘interviews’ which are even being conducted in coffeeshops,” said Chong.

He said he noticed more of such cases in recent years, especially as many Malaysians want to go overseas to eke out a livelihood.

Last December, 47 Malaysians were detained in Cambodia for being involved in illegal online gambling activities.

It was reported that they were offered jobs with lucrative salaries but had only found out that it was a scam when they arrived in Cam­bo­dia.

In February, eight Sarawakians were stranded in Liberia after allegedly being cheated by an employment syndicate.

The Malaysian Em­­ployers Fede­ration called for a dedicated government agency to help protect the welfare of Malaysians who go overseas to work.

Its executive director Datuk Sham­suddin Bardan said this was to prevent them from being exploited and falling prey to illegal job syndicates.

“We have more than one million Malaysians working overseas but we have no proper body to monitor their affairs,” he said yesterday.

He noted that the Filippine government would ensure that their citizens who are sent overseas to work are properly trained and that they are employed by a legitimate company.

“The Filipino government would ensure that there is a proper document signed between the employer and agent, and if anything happens to the worker, the agent will be held responsible.

“We should emulate the Philip­pines to help our workers who aspire to work overseas,” he said.

However, he said the grim reality was that many Malaysian workers were enticed to work overseas because of the attractive pay, even if the details surrounding the employment were unclear.

“Employees are attracted to the higher wages offered in those countries, where the income promised triple or even quadruple what they are earning in Malaysia – and most of these jobs do not require high level of skills such as picking fruit.

“A difficult economic situation in Malaysia with the rising costs of living also contribute to the problem.

“We must re-look at our employment practices, how we remunerate our employees and develop our talent,” he said.

Malaysian Trades Union Congress secretary-general J. Solomon agreed that better policies and enforcement were needed to monitor the outflow of Malaysian workers to other countries.

“The authorities and their relevant agencies need to know where Malaysian workers are going when they travel overseas,” he said.

He said tighter enforcement was especially needed as more false job advertisements were disseminated easily on various social media platforms.

“It is high time the Cabinet review and encourage companies to comply with minimum wage level,” he said.

The low wages in Malaysia and the stigma of 3D (dirty, dangerous and difficult) jobs cause Malaysians to desperately seek employment outside the country, he added.

“These factors are causing Malay­sians to go elsewhere to find alternative sources of income,” he said.

By Fatimah zainal and Clarissa Chung The Star


Related news:

Singapore recruitment: beware of scammers - HeadHunt Singapore

 

Singapore recruitment: beware of scammers - HeadHunt Singapore

 

What Should I Do If I Am a Job Scam Victim? | Randstad Singapore

 

34-year-old woman arrested for job scam in Singapore | Human ...

One held and two remanded over Cambodia and Liberia job scams

 

34 Malaysians fall for Aussie job scam | New Straits Times | Malaysia 

Thousands fall for Korean work scam, National, Phnom Penh Post

Related posts:

5,000 Malaysians are illegals in South Korea, lured by higher pay, living underground !

 

In a tough market, young South Koreans vie for the security of government jobs

Bureaucratic staying power:  While boy band BTS may be going places (no, that Grammy award is not theirs), a government survey shows that...

Vanishing Jobs Growth Spells Deep Trouble for South Korea

  

Trump's tariffs won't restore U.S. jobs

In a tough market, young South Koreans vie for the security of government jobs

Bureaucratic staying power:  While boy band BTS may be going places (no, that Grammy award is not theirs), a government survey shows that one in four middle-school students in South Korea dream of one day becoming not K-pop star or the next Steve Jobs, but that 'adjussi' in the civil service - Reuters

Desire for stability: Many South Koreans worry far more about jobs and the economy than they do about the nuclear threat from North Korea, like this jobseeker at a jobs fair in Seoul last November. — AFP

South Korean Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki, third from left, makes remarks at a meeting on reviving the economy at the government complex in Seoul on Jan. 9, 2019. (YONHAP / EPA-EFE/REX)

In a tough market, young South Koreans dream for the security of government jobs instead of tech innovation and K-pop success.

For more than three years, Kim Ju-hee has been studying full time for an exam that feels like her only shot at a good life in South Korea.

She’s lost count of how many times she’s taken the nation’s civil service exam and failed — though she knows it’s been at least 10. The 26-year-old is not sure what she’ll do if she fails again, so she figures that spending more than eight hours a day studying for her next try, on April 6, makes sense.

Kim hopes to become a government tax clerk, which offers a starting salary of about $17,000, and work for the government until retirement.

“There just aren’t other good jobs,” she said in a phone interview from her home in Seoul, where she lives with her parents.

The most sought-after careers among teenagers and young adults in South Korea, Asia’s fourth-largest economy, are government jobs they can count on to get them to their golden years, not jobs innovating and helping companies grow in the private sector.

Analysts say it’s a symptom of the nation’s slowing economic growth and competition from China in export-driven industries that young South Koreans, about a fifth of the 51 million population, are flocking to what they consider risk-free government jobs not vulnerable to the vicissitudes of the economy. The situation is particularly concerning because it was private companies in sectors like electronics, autos and shipbuilding that fueled South Korea’s rapid growth from one of the world’s poorest nations in the 1960s into an economic powerhouse, analysts say.

Many young people in South Korea say they don’t expect nongovernment job prospects to improve anytime soon despite a host of measures announced by South Korean President Moon Jae-in nearly a year ago to boost employment, including government stipends to companies.



South Korean President Moon Jae-in, right, puts on a safety helmet during his tour of a hydrogen plant in Ulsan, South Korea. Critics have pointed to the lackluster economy to say the president should be focusing on bettering South Korean lives, engaging with North Korea. (YONHAP / EPA-EFE / REX)

Unemployment among those ages 15 to 29 reached 11.6% last spring — a level Moon called catastrophic, compared with a jobless rate that hovered between 3% and 4% for the rest of the country’s workforce. Taking into account young adults who are working part-time jobs or studying for an employment exam like Kim, nearly 1 in 4 are out of a job. By comparison, in the U.S., unemployment among those ages 15 to 24 fluctuated between 8% and 9% in 2018. South Korea uses a different age bracket to calculate its youth unemployment because of mandatory two-year military service.

The desire for stability and security starts so young that 1 in 4 middle school students say they dream of one day becoming not a K-pop star or the next Steve Jobs, but a public sector bureaucrat, according to a government survey from 2017.

Many South Koreans worry far more about jobs and the economy than they do about the nuclear threat from North Korea. Conservatives in South Korea who are critical of Moon’s efforts at detente with North Korea point to the economy, saying his focus should be on bettering lives in South Korea, not on engaging with the North.

Competition for South Korea’s 1.07 million government jobs is fierce. In one round of exams Kim took last year, more than 200,000 people applied, and the 4,953 highest-scoring candidates were hired for open positions — an acceptance rate of 2.4%. By comparison, Harvard’s 2018 acceptance rate was 4.59%.

Kim Y.H., 22, who is about to graduate from college in February with a degree in Japanese, recently began studying for a civil service exam to become a customs agent. She said the popularity of public sector jobs was a sign that her generation is pessimistic about South Korea’s economic outlook.

“The country won’t guarantee your future, even if you’re a college graduate,” she said. “So of course we want to go with the most stable path that’s out there.”

There isn’t the expectation that you’ll grow or get good treatment in the private sector. People choose stability over risk or challenge. Joo Won, economist

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One research report published last year estimated that as many as half a million South Koreans were studying for civil service exams full time instead of working. In 2017, the Hyundai Research Institute estimated that the economic cost from the lost work potential of so many young people spending years studying to get government jobs, rather than joining the private workforce, was more than $15 billion.

Moon’s administration has tried to encourage employment among young adults by paying small and medium-sized businesses to hire them, and by offering government-matched savings programs for young workers. He has also pledged to add 174,000 government jobs by 2022 to meet the heightened demand.

Some analysts, however, say the administration’s stopgap measures won’t do much to fix the problems underlying the push for government jobs.

“There isn’t the expectation that you’ll grow or get good treatment in the private sector. People choose stability over risk or challenge,” said Joo Won, one of the authors of the Hyundai study. “There are only so many public sector jobs the government can create. It won’t fix the situation.”

Many analysts point to the widening gap between the behemoth family-owned conglomerates that dominate the South Korean economy, such as Samsung and LG, and other companies. Large corporations including the chaebol, as they are known, accounted for about half of the revenue in South Korea in 2017 but provided only 20% of the jobs in the country, according to the most recent figures available from the government. And while their share of the economy grew, the number of jobs they offered dropped, because of consolidation and downsizing within the corporations amid the economic slowdown.

 

A Samsung flag and South Korean flag outside the Samsung building in Seoul in January. Analysts say part of problem for young job seekers in South Korea is the widening gap between the quality of jobs at family-owned conglomerates like Samsung and the rest of the players. (Jung Yeon-je / AFP/Getty Images)

That polarisation means stark disparity in income and working conditions between those employed by the conglomerates and those employed elsewhere – with starting salaries at large corporations averaging about US$36,000 (RM 146,370), compared with approximately US$24,000 (RM97,580) at smaller companies – fuelling intense competition for a decreasing number of coveted jobs. “The world was harsher than I thought,” she said.

“If you work for a small or medium-sized company, you become a second-class citizen” with a fraction of the income, long hours and poor benefits, said Kwon Soon-won, a business professor at Sookmyung University in Seoul.

Those without the impressive resumes increasingly needed for jobs at the top companies — internships, perfect grades, proficiency in a foreign language or three — are turning to civil service exams.

Applicants to civil service exams tripled from 1995 to 2016, according to a report by the Seoul Youth Guarantee Center. One online bookseller said it saw a 73.5% increase in sales of civil service exam prep books in 2016 compared with the previous year.

Kwon said South Korea’s high education level is part of the problem — although 70% of those ages 24 to 35 have college degrees, the economy hasn’t kept pace by creating enough quality jobs to meet the increased expectations of those graduates.

Kim Eun-ji, 26, certainly feels that way. With an economics degree from Chung-Ang University, a top-10 college in Seoul, she applied to more than 50 jobs at a wide range of companies big and small but never got past first-round interviews.

“If I think about how many people there are like me in the country, it just feels pointless,” she said, leaving an employment center in Seoul.

She has been studying for a government-issued computerized accounting license to better her employment prospects. Among her friends who graduated around the same time she did in early 2016, only about half are employed full time, Kim said.

Her roommate, who keeps deferring her college graduation, has been making a modest but steady income publishing romance novels online, which strikes her as a more viable option at a steady income than traditional employment.

As a kid, Kim Ju-hee had dreamed of becoming a singer or a teacher. But as an eighth-grader, hearing how hard it was to get a stable job, she set her sights on becoming a bureaucrat.

She’s gotten close to giving up, occasionally applying to other jobs or working part time here and there. But she worries that if she gives up, she’ll have spent years of her life in vain because none of what she studied for the exam will be useful for other jobs.

   By Victoria Kim - Los Angeles Times

Contact

---

Victoria Kim reports from Seoul, South Korea, for the Los Angeles Times. Since joining the paper in 2007, she has covered the state and federal courts and the Korean community in Los Angeles. Her work has included investigations on the cover-up of the sex abuse scandal in the Los Angeles Archdiocese, killing of unarmed suspects by the Inglewood police, underpaid workers in the garment district and unaccredited law schools in California. She has previously written for the Associated Press in South Korea and West Africa, as well as the Financial Times in New York. Victoria was raised in Seoul and graduated from Harvard University.


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Vanishing Jobs Growth Spells Deep Trouble for South Korea

  

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In a tough market, young South Koreans vie for the security of government jobs

Bureaucratic staying power:  While boy band BTS may be going places (no, that Grammy award is not theirs), a government survey shows that one in four middle-school students in South Korea dream of one day becoming not K-pop star or the next Steve Jobs, but that 'adjussi' in the civil service - Reuters

Desire for stability: Many South Koreans worry far more about jobs and the economy than they do about the nuclear threat from North Korea, like this jobseeker at a jobs fair in Seoul last November. — AFP

South Korean Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki, third from left, makes remarks at a meeting on reviving the economy at the government complex in Seoul on Jan. 9, 2019. (YONHAP / EPA-EFE/REX)

In a tough market, young South Koreans dream for the security of government jobs instead of tech innovation and K-pop success.

For more than three years, Kim Ju-hee has been studying full time for an exam that feels like her only shot at a good life in South Korea.

She’s lost count of how many times she’s taken the nation’s civil service exam and failed — though she knows it’s been at least 10. The 26-year-old is not sure what she’ll do if she fails again, so she figures that spending more than eight hours a day studying for her next try, on April 6, makes sense.

Kim hopes to become a government tax clerk, which offers a starting salary of about $17,000, and work for the government until retirement.

“There just aren’t other good jobs,” she said in a phone interview from her home in Seoul, where she lives with her parents.

The most sought-after careers among teenagers and young adults in South Korea, Asia’s fourth-largest economy, are government jobs they can count on to get them to their golden years, not jobs innovating and helping companies grow in the private sector.

Analysts say it’s a symptom of the nation’s slowing economic growth and competition from China in export-driven industries that young South Koreans, about a fifth of the 51 million population, are flocking to what they consider risk-free government jobs not vulnerable to the vicissitudes of the economy. The situation is particularly concerning because it was private companies in sectors like electronics, autos and shipbuilding that fueled South Korea’s rapid growth from one of the world’s poorest nations in the 1960s into an economic powerhouse, analysts say.

Many young people in South Korea say they don’t expect nongovernment job prospects to improve anytime soon despite a host of measures announced by South Korean President Moon Jae-in nearly a year ago to boost employment, including government stipends to companies.



South Korean President Moon Jae-in, right, puts on a safety helmet during his tour of a hydrogen plant in Ulsan, South Korea. Critics have pointed to the lackluster economy to say the president should be focusing on bettering South Korean lives, engaging with North Korea. (YONHAP / EPA-EFE / REX)

Unemployment among those ages 15 to 29 reached 11.6% last spring — a level Moon called catastrophic, compared with a jobless rate that hovered between 3% and 4% for the rest of the country’s workforce. Taking into account young adults who are working part-time jobs or studying for an employment exam like Kim, nearly 1 in 4 are out of a job. By comparison, in the U.S., unemployment among those ages 15 to 24 fluctuated between 8% and 9% in 2018. South Korea uses a different age bracket to calculate its youth unemployment because of mandatory two-year military service.

The desire for stability and security starts so young that 1 in 4 middle school students say they dream of one day becoming not a K-pop star or the next Steve Jobs, but a public sector bureaucrat, according to a government survey from 2017.

Many South Koreans worry far more about jobs and the economy than they do about the nuclear threat from North Korea. Conservatives in South Korea who are critical of Moon’s efforts at detente with North Korea point to the economy, saying his focus should be on bettering lives in South Korea, not on engaging with the North.

Competition for South Korea’s 1.07 million government jobs is fierce. In one round of exams Kim took last year, more than 200,000 people applied, and the 4,953 highest-scoring candidates were hired for open positions — an acceptance rate of 2.4%. By comparison, Harvard’s 2018 acceptance rate was 4.59%.

Kim Y.H., 22, who is about to graduate from college in February with a degree in Japanese, recently began studying for a civil service exam to become a customs agent. She said the popularity of public sector jobs was a sign that her generation is pessimistic about South Korea’s economic outlook.

“The country won’t guarantee your future, even if you’re a college graduate,” she said. “So of course we want to go with the most stable path that’s out there.”

There isn’t the expectation that you’ll grow or get good treatment in the private sector. People choose stability over risk or challenge. Joo Won, economist

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One research report published last year estimated that as many as half a million South Koreans were studying for civil service exams full time instead of working. In 2017, the Hyundai Research Institute estimated that the economic cost from the lost work potential of so many young people spending years studying to get government jobs, rather than joining the private workforce, was more than $15 billion.

Moon’s administration has tried to encourage employment among young adults by paying small and medium-sized businesses to hire them, and by offering government-matched savings programs for young workers. He has also pledged to add 174,000 government jobs by 2022 to meet the heightened demand.

Some analysts, however, say the administration’s stopgap measures won’t do much to fix the problems underlying the push for government jobs.

“There isn’t the expectation that you’ll grow or get good treatment in the private sector. People choose stability over risk or challenge,” said Joo Won, one of the authors of the Hyundai study. “There are only so many public sector jobs the government can create. It won’t fix the situation.”

Many analysts point to the widening gap between the behemoth family-owned conglomerates that dominate the South Korean economy, such as Samsung and LG, and other companies. Large corporations including the chaebol, as they are known, accounted for about half of the revenue in South Korea in 2017 but provided only 20% of the jobs in the country, according to the most recent figures available from the government. And while their share of the economy grew, the number of jobs they offered dropped, because of consolidation and downsizing within the corporations amid the economic slowdown.

 

A Samsung flag and South Korean flag outside the Samsung building in Seoul in January. Analysts say part of problem for young job seekers in South Korea is the widening gap between the quality of jobs at family-owned conglomerates like Samsung and the rest of the players. (Jung Yeon-je / AFP/Getty Images)

That polarisation means stark disparity in income and working conditions between those employed by the conglomerates and those employed elsewhere – with starting salaries at large corporations averaging about US$36,000 (RM 146,370), compared with approximately US$24,000 (RM97,580) at smaller companies – fuelling intense competition for a decreasing number of coveted jobs. “The world was harsher than I thought,” she said.

“If you work for a small or medium-sized company, you become a second-class citizen” with a fraction of the income, long hours and poor benefits, said Kwon Soon-won, a business professor at Sookmyung University in Seoul.

Those without the impressive resumes increasingly needed for jobs at the top companies — internships, perfect grades, proficiency in a foreign language or three — are turning to civil service exams.

Applicants to civil service exams tripled from 1995 to 2016, according to a report by the Seoul Youth Guarantee Center. One online bookseller said it saw a 73.5% increase in sales of civil service exam prep books in 2016 compared with the previous year.

Kwon said South Korea’s high education level is part of the problem — although 70% of those ages 24 to 35 have college degrees, the economy hasn’t kept pace by creating enough quality jobs to meet the increased expectations of those graduates.

Kim Eun-ji, 26, certainly feels that way. With an economics degree from Chung-Ang University, a top-10 college in Seoul, she applied to more than 50 jobs at a wide range of companies big and small but never got past first-round interviews.

“If I think about how many people there are like me in the country, it just feels pointless,” she said, leaving an employment center in Seoul.

She has been studying for a government-issued computerized accounting license to better her employment prospects. Among her friends who graduated around the same time she did in early 2016, only about half are employed full time, Kim said.

Her roommate, who keeps deferring her college graduation, has been making a modest but steady income publishing romance novels online, which strikes her as a more viable option at a steady income than traditional employment.

As a kid, Kim Ju-hee had dreamed of becoming a singer or a teacher. But as an eighth-grader, hearing how hard it was to get a stable job, she set her sights on becoming a bureaucrat.

She’s gotten close to giving up, occasionally applying to other jobs or working part time here and there. But she worries that if she gives up, she’ll have spent years of her life in vain because none of what she studied for the exam will be useful for other jobs.

   By Victoria Kim - Los Angeles Times

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Victoria Kim reports from Seoul, South Korea, for the Los Angeles Times. Since joining the paper in 2007, she has covered the state and federal courts and the Korean community in Los Angeles. Her work has included investigations on the cover-up of the sex abuse scandal in the Los Angeles Archdiocese, killing of unarmed suspects by the Inglewood police, underpaid workers in the garment district and unaccredited law schools in California. She has previously written for the Associated Press in South Korea and West Africa, as well as the Financial Times in New York. Victoria was raised in Seoul and graduated from Harvard University.


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Liberating the Malay mindset, the right way to speak out

The right way to speak out

I REFER to the article “The real Malay Dilemma” ((The real Malay dilemma: race, religion & politics, Siti Thoughts, Sunday Star, Aug 26). Siti Kassim made her details as clear as they can be but not without error in her bewildering opinion on the subject.

Siti’s observation is near faultless and I wonder if she is sincere enough to defend the cause of changing the so-called Malay mindset. Firstly, why publish such a strong, emotional and provocative article in an English newspaper if she insists that she has studied her “targeted audience” well enough?

Learn and appreciate the views of a different mindset before telling everyone to change. According to Bakri Musa, a mindset refers to the outlook in or philosophy of life. It is a set of ideas, attitudes and opinions that we – as individuals or members of a group – share of reality, or of what we recognise to be reality.

Neurologically speaking, a mindset is the pre-existing neural pattern in our brain; conceptually, it is our mental hypothesis of reality. Having said this, the mindset is not really a result of the religion’s influence but rather of their past experiences.

It is common to see differing mindsets among people in other countries too, but why exactly wouldn’t anyone in those countries make a big fuss about it?

Malaysia is a progressing population and some of its characters do not wish to portray their advancement as a double-edged weapon. We need to be thoughtful and informed about it.

Not only is it the wrong thing to say but it is also the wrong way to do it. We understand that Islam is a way to help ourselves to improve. There is no flaw in Islam when we talk about civilisation; Islam is civilisation. It was a tried-and-true Islamic value that brought the ancient world to its golden age during its peak.

Some individuals who have a lazy understanding of Islam will describe its teachings as backward, prohibitive and jumud; and they repeatedly use Islam as an excuse for many problems. This unceasing stream of vitriol towards Islam is nothing new.

A change in government will not change the people’s mindset. The May general election did not bring about a change in mindset but rather a choice of two governments, one less benign than the other.

It is not surprising that the so-called liberal Malays are accused of being blasphemous because the accusers are not able to answer or defend a particular issue brought up by repugnant personas. With this in mind, if we let it continue, Malays will be further divided as liberals and conservatives.

Majlis ilmu, seminars and tahfiz schools are not harmful; on the contrary, they are as good as TED Talks if we want them to be. Let’s see them in a different light. Being obsessed with such things is not harmful. We are in dire need of getting the right contents and ideas to share – and we have many of them.

Why would we want to waste such golden opportunities for getting the right message across? If we need to tweak the content to make it more conducive, multicultural or suggestive, we will do better as multicultural societies.

If we can encourage the Malays to ask the right questions about development and their contribution as a Malaysian community, and ultimately shape the demand for knowledge, then every ustaz, ustazah and religious teacher will have to provide the right answers.

But why wouldn’t the Malays ask the right questions? Maybe that is when the fixed mindset comes into play. Rather than putting these forums in a poor light and defining them as the reasons for the nation’s problems, there are more effective ways to bring the change via the same existing ground.

We do not want to compare Malaysia with Iran, Saudi Arabia, or even Switzerland for that matter. There are different dynamics in Malaysia, and even Aceh has its own uniqueness. Malaysia will never be like those countries and those countries will never be like Malaysia.

On the same note, we do not need to model Malaysia on other Muslim-majority countries, good or bad. We should stand on our own and set a new precedent for other Muslim countries to follow.

We are not going to focus on religion solely for the afterlife but as an equally important design to survive and compete globally together as a nation.

Any issues found in other Muslim countries are coherently found in non-Muslim countries: bad governance and corruption are universal. We can uphold syariah law and be 100% Islamic, yet there will still be people who circumvent the law to line their pockets.

We are moving towards changing the paradigm of Malays being supplicants. Most Malays are ready to lead the change. The only thing is they are not singing loudly enough. So who or what is holding them back?

Malays can’t dispel the stereotypical perception others have of them. And we always make efforts to maintain our self-affirmation, not surprisingly buttressing the stereotype in the process.

Some Malays fear more the threat of being seen as a stereotype rather than actually being the stereotype, and this could be one of the reasons why we see gaps in streamlining the grand purpose of understanding Islam among the progressive Malays.

Being apologetic for the bumiputra policy is not considered appropriate as it was properly studied and the implication was well understood.

Our forefathers would have known the long-term divisive consequences, and this is particularly poignant given the non-bumiputra’s outstanding contributions in developing the country.

However, all Malaysians must accept that such a policy is the right way to help the nation. Malays have already become aware of the reasons for such policies and of how the opinions of some of them are being manipulated by politicians to stay in power. We just need to know when and where to make a healthy distinction.

I celebrate Siti’s righteousness and her gifts but she has to be careful that she uses them wisely and avert some scenarios that will hamper everyone’s efforts.

If maybe one day Siti could share the good things she likes about Muslim and Malays, and share these as an agent of change, there would definitely be more who would listen to her and be inspired, I guarantee it.

Being an activist without having an action plan to change the people’s mindset is not going to work.

IKMAL BAHARUDIN Kuala Lumpur, The Staronline


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>>>> " 90% of the Doctorates held by Malays is not worth the toilet paper on which it is printed because it was all produced by some internet degree mill for a fee and worse still is when you hold them to a discussion or debate , the thoughts that emanate from the area between their ears is so embarrassing you want to run away and jump off a cliff but yet they proudly parade their Doctorates with pride "

>> >> " 90% of the Malay wealth is not from the fruits of their labour as great entrepreneurs , like the Chinese , but rather the hand-outs of their political patronage and cronyism and there is nothing to be proud of the huge mansions and expensive cars and life-style , because they are nothing but the produce of utter corruption at stealing the wealth of the people's blood , sweat and tears , and yet , without shame their spouses and children flaunt it like they earned all these through intelligence and hard-work .

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In his keynote speech at an event to mark the sixth anniversary of the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (Ideas), Musa said this was because the former premier did not train leaders but instead chose to retain and train followers instead.

“It is ironic that Dr Mahathir’s vision is now certain to fail because of Dr Mahathir himself.

 

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