ICT industry faces manpower shortage, says Pikom

PETALING JAYA: Despite news of cost reductions and retrenchments by companies affected by the economic slowdown, job vacancies and salaries continue to rise within the information and communications technology (ICT) industry.
In fact, the sector still faces a shortage of manpower especially for certain skill sets, such as software engineering and programming, said the National ICT Association of Malaysia (Pikom).
"All this while, even with the current situation, we don't really see much difficulty for IT personnel getting jobs. In fact, according to our job market survey every year, you can see their salaries keep increasing and are not going down," its chairman Chin Chee Seong told SunBiz in an interview.
He said salaries within the sector are still growing, although not as much as the 20-30% yearly increase observed about three years ago. Last year, ICT sector salaries grew 7-8% and is estimated to grow at the same pace this year.
"Overall, there are retrenchments in every sector. It depends on the individual corporation. On the programming side, demand is still growing. In fact, if you look at MSC companies, they are increasing the number of hires every year," he said, referring to Multimedia Super Corridor-status companies.
According to Chin, one of the biggest challenges faced by the sector is the matching of graduates with manpower demand. About 30,000 graduates are produced yearly but only a small percentage have knowledge in software development and computer engineering.
In addition, the number of IT graduates has remained the same for the last five to six years and interest in ICT programmes is dwindling while demand for manpower continues to grow as more new IT companies are formed and multinationals continue to invest here.
"It is our responsibility to encourage more people to go for proper courses. So job education is very important. If they know what they are going to be and the opportunity is there, then from the beginning they will be interested to study," he said.
Moving forward, Chin said Pikom members are more cautious with their expenditures and business planning due to the impact of the ringgit depreciation.
"The currency factor hit a lot of members in terms of expenses. Corporates and conglomerates have had to fork out big amounts to pay for licensing to foreign-owned companies such as Microsoft. Some of our members such as the networking providers and hardware resellers were stuck because of that.
"Last year, some members made RM20 million to RM30 million revenue but only raked in RM300,000 due to the currency factor.
"Members more cautious in planning now. Because cost keeps getting higher for conglomerates, they cut whatever they can cut. Number one cost in any organisation is IT. So it is the first thing they cut. Instead of maintaining 20 machines, they may cut to five machines to reduce cost," he added.
Chin said vendors suffer as companies try to avoid retrenchments and look to reduce or delay purchases instead.
"As for the future, business growth still there, but everyone is cautious, especially due to the currency. These are tough situations for us to face," he said.