LETTER | This situation of unemployed graduates is an old story. There are reasons why there are university graduates who have taken to driving Uber or Grab cars and some selling nasi lemak, or become touts selling wares at eateries and food courts.

Well, it is simply because these are self-employed jobs which they can start and do at any time, so long they discard their ego or ideas of becoming someone for what they had majored in at university.

If they remain selective or not doing something to keep them busy at work, they will become unemployed until kingdom come under the circumstance.

Secondly, perhaps some graduates are not proficient in English, and so they are handicapped when they look for employment in the job market.

Those who come from small towns or living in the interior will face more difficulties getting employed after they have graduated - since most big companies are located in the cities.

Even in towns like Ipoh, employers cannot pay them the salary which comes with the job, so this is another stumbling block why some news graduates choose to stay unemployed.

Now, this is the main reason why new graduates either have to take a job as Uber/Grab car drivers or doing two jobs. They can’t wait any longer for someone or company to employ them for what they have majored or graduated in, and they need a job to get the money to repay their study loans.

The government is to be blamed here for having so many unemployed new graduates, year in and year out.

The country is too short on employers - there aren’t enough “high-end” employers. So it is a situation of supply exceeding demand.

The domino effect will hit Malaysia hard in its quest to become a developed nation if you look at the number of unemployable graduates getting desperately looking for jobs.

And, how to achieve this target when Malaysians are getting paid small salaries and wages - as compared with their counterparts from developed nations in the region. What about the unemployed?

There is a shortage of paymasters and they are usually the foreign employers who have invested in the country. Exactly, there is an urgency to increase the number of foreign investors.

For now, the bottom line to get the country to become a high income nation on target is questionable, let alone achieving developed nation status.

The government should know why these foreign investors are going to Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore. The reason is that the economies of these countries are getting stronger, so their currency has appreciated in recent years.

With the weak ringgit and poor economy, coupled with a high unemployment rate in Malaysia, it is unlikely for the nation to achieve its target on time, that is by 2050.

These are key factors which foreign investors are looking for as a guarantee for their investments.

Not only has there been a manifold increase in the population, apart from the thousands of new graduates pouring into the job market every year looking for employment. The actual unemployment rate in Malaysia should be higher than that reported by the government, because this excluded many self-employed Malaysians who are doing odd jobs and part-time work for a living.

The government had failed to bring in more foreign investors into the country to start up regional sales and marketing offices as well as to set up plants and factories for manufacturing and productions, every year, to see that there will be more jobs available for all fields of works and specialities.

Right now, this is limited and the number of foreign investors has not gone up in recent years.

To make Malaysia more attractive for foreign investors, the government should remove archaic laws and restrictions and to offer more incentives to foreign investors, to invest in the country, if not they will go elsewhere.

In the interim, the government should reduce the number of private institutions of learning, universities and colleges, in order to control the yearly output of new graduates, until the country has got the “number of” employers available to absorb them into their operations or services.

The standards for admission need to be raised - this should prevent the job market from being flooded with too many new graduates looking for employment, because as it is, it is already snowballing from year to year.

If the government had done their job from the beginning, then there won’t be this scarcity.

At the end of the day, many unemployed Malaysians now need the government to feed them or to end up living on government welfare. In certain cases, this may lead to a spike in crime.

To create jobs needed to keep every graduate at work, the International Trade and Industry Ministry should travel around the world more to lure foreign investors to invest in Malaysia, to set up manufacturing plants, or to use Malaysia as a regional distribution centre.

If the rules and requirements and laws to start up shop are too stringent, then remove them or amicably change it on a win-win situation for both parties.

The government should act on this promptly to save the country from becoming a failing state, where medical specialists are walking the streets looking for house calls.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.