Rokiah Mahmud
EmployAbility is a Brunei LNG Sdn Bhd social investment flagship aimed at increasing employment and ability in terms of skills and competence through capability building of the local workforce.
This was highlighted by Brunei LNG Sdn Bhd Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Hajah Farida binti Dato Seri Paduka Haji Talib during the signing of in-service trainees (second intake) of the Apprenticeship Programme under EmployAbility, a Brunei LNG social investment flag-ship yesterday.
She highlighted the ambition to build a capable Bruneian workforce to deliver Brunei Vision 2035 and being a key contributor in the ASEAN region.
“The strategic intent is to build a sustainable, and skilled local workforce as to ensure a stable and resilient business for Brunei LNG and Brunei,” she said.
“Under the banner of EmployAbility, the local personal agreement aims to identify, build and hire a skilled worker pipeline by building a sustainable local workforce that contributes to lowering national unemployment by reskilling and upskilling of available jobseekers through training and coaching.
“Secondly, the programme takes qualified employees from the four business partners and sponsor their upskilling and reskilling. The in-service training will make use of the Lifelong Learning Centre programme under the Manpower Industry Steering Committee for Energy – iSkill’s Industry Skill certification which is in collaboration with the Institute of Brunei Technical Education as the awarding organisation for the programme.
EmployAbility, she said, “will build a sustainable local workforce to replace foreign workers executing our base load of ongoing fixed activities. Moreover, it will help reduce the need or our business partners to compete within a limited pool when looking to meet LBD requirements.
“Last year in the preparation towards our first turnaround in March, during the first wave of COVID-19, the closure of borders impacted our ability to bring in the required number of foreign skilled workers to execute our planned activities. The constraint consequently led to reduction and deferment of activities into 2022 and beyond.”
“This highlighted how dependent our business and industry were on our ability to secure skilled foreign workers to supplement local capability, to execute our planned activities. This presented an opportunity for us, our business partners, and the country to reduce unemployment and make great strides in developing a sustainable skilled local workforce.
“It also presented the opportunity to de-risk future campaigns, through a structured campaign of identifying, reskilling and matching local capability to jobs that will support the execution of our activities for 2022 and beyond,” she added.
“Today we celebrate the second intake. At the beginning of last month, five personnel from Adinin Works and Engineering and four personnel from Tendrill International started their reskilling and upskilling training at the registered training organisations. Of the nine, we have four scaffolders, three marker-fitters and two riggers,” she said.
“We are now exploring training institutions to provide upskilling courses that are in demand, particularly in electrical and instrumentation.”
