JOHOR BAHRU:The Johor government is currently in the process of helping more than 1,000 homeless people, some of whom are identified as individuals who work in Singapore, to secure jobs.

State Investment, Entrepreneur Development, Cooperative and Human Resource Committee chairman Mohd Izhar Ahmad said of the total, 50 per cent of them are identified as transit homeless namely workers who could not enter the republic to work due to the COVID-19.

He said 30 per cent of the homeless are addicts while 20 per cent are those with family problems such as divorce and so on.

According to him, the first step to be done was to place all of them in a special shelter before the effort to help the homeless to find jobs is being done.

"We want to gather them and place them in one shelter, and then look at each individual's ability before including them in the upskilling and reskilling programmes to match them with any relevant positions,” he told reporters after launching the Health Day programme organised by Ranhill SAJ here yesterday.

Mohd Izhar said the effort to address this issue was done in collaboration with the Social Welfare Department, Human Capital Unit and JobsMalaysia.

-- BERNAMA