NEM to yield new class of citizens

KUALA LUMPUR: The New Economic Model (NEM) will reskill and retrain the bottom 40% of workers and turn them into a new crop of middle-class citizens, says Johor Ba­ru MP Datuk Shahrir Samad.

“People at the bottom 40% do not have capital but they have the human resource. Re-skilling and retraining programmes will move them to higher income jobs, even as the country retools itself for a higher value economy,” Shahrir said.

The so-called bottom 40% are those currently earning RM1,500 or less a month. The NEM aims to double their income over the next 10 years, vaulting this group into a new middle-class. “What happened before was, we created billionaires, but because the foundation was not strong, it just took one financial crisis to wipe them out.

“If we had created the middle-class, then it’s more stable,” he added. He said now, the NEM would allow them to compete on the basis of technical “know-how”, rather the “who-you-know”. “It’s no longer top-down but it’s driven from the bottom.” — Bernama