Najib has created the so-called ” Talent Corporation”. Will it work? Will it bring back all our talents and “brains” that left the country over the last 40 years? If you ask most of the people who left this country, it is not because of money! It is the system and politics of the country that pushes them away. Even for myself, leaving the country is something that I am keeping my options open. Too much of racial and religious “sermons” everyday. Institutionalised discrimination. No freedom of speech, can’t question our leaders/policies in the name of ” Malay rights” etc etc. These are the factors that chases away our best brains.
How can a person call themselves a citizen and be proud of it if they are not treated as equal. Every form that you feel , you need to state your race and religion! Lately it has got even worst. If you notice that even bank account opening form has the race and religion in it!! WTH. Even our Malaysian Medical Council form for APC renewal has included race and religion. For what reason , I got no idea. I thought APC is just for us to be able to practise medicine in Malaysia. Worst still, even Ministry of Health disease notification forms has race! So what if the dengue patient is a Malay/Chinese or Indian? Does it matter?
Almost every form that you fill when sending your child to Standard 1 has this 2 important questions! When you ask the school, they will tell you that it is for statistics purposes. After 53 years of independence, we should all be known as Malaysians but this will never happen in Bolehland!
Unless and untill the government changes these policies, the Talent Corporation will be a big failure. UMNO chased away all the best brains since Mahathir’s era but beginning to realise their mistake and trying to make a U-turn. History repeats itself!, the real history I mean, not BN’s history book.
Malaysia struggles to stem ‘brain drain’ as talent departs
When computer engineer Wan Jon Yew left Malaysia in 2005 for a job in Singapore, all he wanted was to work in the city state for a few years before going home. Now, he says, he will never return.
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With a family, a home and a car, he now plans to settle in Singapore for good — just one of the many Malaysians stampeding abroad every year in a worrying “brain drain” the government is trying to reverse.
“I wouldn’t consider going back to Malaysia, I won’t look back. If I were ever going to leave Singapore, I would migrate to Australia,” said the 28-year-old, who now has permanent resident status.
“It’s not about the money. I could have a better quality of life in Malaysia with my pay. I could have a semi-detached bungalow and have a maid there, but I would rather live in a government flat in Singapore.”
Wan, who is ethnically Chinese, is one of some 700,000 Malaysians — most of them highly educated — who are currently working abroad in an exodus that Prime Minister Najib Razak’s government is struggling to reverse.
The “brain drain” has a number of causes. Some have been lured by higher salaries, but others blame political and social gripes including preferential policies for Muslim Malays, who form the majority.
Many feel constrained by life in a country where the ruling coalition has been in power for half a century, and where progress on freedom of expression, the right to assembly, and tackling corruption has been slow.
A decades-old affirmative action policy which hands Malays and the indigenous groups privileges in housing, education and business, has been criticised as uncompetitive and improperly benefiting the elite.
As a consequence, many of those who have left are members of Malaysia’s ethnic Chinese and Indian minorities, who make up some 25 percent and 10 percent of the population respectively.
Najib in December launched a “Talent Corporation” with incentives to woo back these highly skilled workers, as well as foreign professionals, to live and work in his multi-ethnic country.
Malaysia, Southeast Asia’s third-largest economy with a population of 28 million, has ambitions to transform itself into a developed nation by 2020, but a lack of human capital is a barrier to reaching that goal.
World Bank data cited by the Malaysian press shows that while globally the number of migrants rose 2.4 times between 1960 and 2005, Malaysia’s diaspora registered a staggering 155-fold increase over the 45-year period.
“I don’t want my children to go through the unfair treatment,” said Wan, who believes Singapore offers “fair competition”.
“I’m not proud of being a Malaysian because I think the government doesn’t treat me as a Malaysian.
“I would rather be a PR (permanent resident), a second-class citizen in a foreign country, than to be a citizen in my own country.”
Wan said his wife, an IT analyst, renounced her citizenship in July this year, joining a queue of about 30 Malaysians lining up to do so on that day alone at the Malaysian embassy in Singapore.
Commentators are sceptical over whether the government’s latest effort to reverse the “brain drain” will be successful, warning it will be tough to persuade those in self-exile.
“Money does have a significant role but the most important factor, I think, is opportunity. Malaysia is too politicised and opportunities are not evenly available to everyone,” political analyst Wan Saiful Wan Jan told AFP.
In one example, he said academics are reluctant to work in local universities as they must sign a “loyalty pledge” barring them from, among other things, criticising government policies.
“In such an environment, obviously those with talents will find opportunity elsewhere,” said the chief executive of think-tank the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS).
Wan Saiful, who himself returned to Malaysia last year after living in Britain for 17 years, said the newly launched Talent Corporation will be “another expensive failure” if it does not tackle these structural problems.
“When I apply for a job, buy a house, register my children for school etcetera, why does it matter what my race or religion is? This should stop,” said the analyst, himself a Malay.
Ethnic Chinese and Indian professionals who have left the country commonly say they felt a sense of marginalisation in Malaysia.
“When I went back to Malaysia, it was a culture shock in terms of politically how they promote the rights of the Malays over everyone else,” said Chee Yeoh, a stock analyst who migrated to Australia three years ago.
Yeoh was educated overseas from the age of 10 and returned in 1998 to take up a position with a bank, but felt like leaving again “almost immediately”.
“I just didn’t feel at home in Malaysia. I can’t speak the Malay language — essentially I felt like an outsider even more,” said the 35-year-old analyst, who took a pay cut to move to Australia.
Najib has admitted the talent issues are “broad and complex”, and will not set a target on how many Malaysians he hopes to lure back under the new programme.
The initiatives include a “resident pass” which will give foreign skilled workers, and Malaysians who have gave up their citizenship, the long-term right to live and work in the country.
But Fong Chan Onn, Malaysia’s former human resources minister who was instrumental in previous “brain gain” efforts, said the government must tackle the issue holistically.
“The government needs to rectify this sense of marginalisation. We also have to improve the mechanism so it can be more effective to ask these talents to come back,” he told AFP.
“We have a long way to go. It is better late than never.”
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Pagalavan's Avatar 
He doesn’t even know how to speak Malay, he did the right thing by not living in Malaysia
You can follow him if you want.
Why don’t you invite all indos come and live with you.
Then see what they do upon you and your family.
pointless comment
This is the problem with our current generation, especially someone who claim to be a final year medical student! What you said above is just one sentence in the whole article and you have totally forgotten the real issue that was dicussed in that article. I feel really sorry for people like you who don;t see the big picture , probably our education system should be blamed for this.
FYI, learning Malay is not so difficult. Nepalese, Bangladeshis and even Indians in Mamak shops learn how to speak Malay in just few months. So, not being able to speak Malay is NOT a big issue here and you should read the article above again and try to digest what it is trying to say.
It is not surprising to hear such a comment from a person who do not have a single non-Malay friend among 400 friends in facebook. Indeed, UMNO has successfully brainwashed the youngsters.
I read the whole articles and completely understand it.
All issues mentioned above are about political issues. It is impossible to satisfy everyone’s need. There are two options Voice out our opinion or vote them out.
If these measures lead to no change, it is up to us to remain or to leave.
Malay language is the national language. It is irrational for someone living in Malaysia but couldn’t speak our national language. The language itself is a minor issue for me. Some people just cant understand sarcasm.
p/s: I do have 1818 friends in facebook and more than 500 are non Malay. U got the wrong account. Try not to back stab other people.
The person who you are talking about did not grow up in Malaysia, as mentioned in the article. Thus you can’t blame him. FYI I have also seen Malays who stayed overseas since small and came back to the country but can’t speak Malay! As you said, it is a minor issue and thus you should not just talk about this issue alone. If you want to comment on anything, please do so rationally and not emotionally. BTW I am sorry fo quoting the wrong account and I am not backstabbing anyone!
As you said, things need to change but people don;t seem to realise that. That’s why I feel sorry for them! Sarcasm…………….
We have to see the issue from both sides of the coin. And I am not going to explain the duality of perspectives here. However, I shall say this…
It does not matter anymore, the policies of the present day government. I am sick and tired of reading news about both the government, opposition and the so called ‘civil movement’ who have been raking thousands of dollars from their ‘online blogs’ through advertisements, besides the usual corruption and policy manipulation hidden under the guise of ‘ketuanan melayu’ or ‘ketuanan rakyat’. For better or worse, we are all now at the mercy of Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand, thanks to globalization and technological advancement. This applies to all industries, political, health, tourism, etc, etc.
So, let’s see what Najib and gang are capable of doing. At my age, I will live to see the success or destruction of my beloved country over the next 3-4 decades. You can call it whatever, Reformasi, Middle Malaysia, Ketuanan, Nation-building, 1Malaysia, etc, etc. Bottom line; there are only three major types of governance in this modern day world
1. Capitalism
2. Socialism
3. Monarchy
We are not a monarch based system, that is reserved for countries like Brunei, Oman, etc..
And we are not a socialist country for sure. So, no matter how you guise it, we are a capitalist nation… just not in its true sense.. Who is being exploited? That is anybody’s guess. But from my perspective, the hardcore poor in this country has not truly changed much over the past 50 years (yes, in race and religion). The definition of ‘hardcore poor’ has changed, but not the impact.
I’ve been providing medical service in a suburban setting for three years now, and I can tell you something. Poor people have no idea how screwed up things are for them. Malaysian doctors should stop acting so altruistic when in reality, rural patients are getting sub-standard care, and there is nothing we can do about it. So who is really being exploited? And who are the real capitalists in this country?
So the reason ppl leave is because they are (intentionally or unintentionally) not in a position to capitalize on the exploited/poor. My real question is, how many of you are truly bothered about the poor of this country? If you are bothered, then what have you done about it? Nahhh doesnt really matter… ignorance and arrogance here is ripe for the plucking by the multinational entities of the world.
Given that all governments are exploitative and the poor, who are at the bottom of the pecking order, get very little for their efforts in life.
In such a scenario, what is important then, is the amout that filters down to the poor; that is to say how uplifted they are.
And the most important thing a good government MUST do, in fact, the first priority, is to ensure that the poor are brought up the ladder, so that they’ll feel that they are part of society rather than being aliented from it.
A government that simply makes announcements that poverty has been wiped out while there are still thousands of vagrants who sleep on the corridors of shopping complexes, even in big cities like Kuala Lumpur, fool no one.
So, it is up to us, as citizens, to ensure that we have a truly caring government (to whatever extent possible) rather than saying that all governments are bad.
Can the country exists in a vacuum, without a government?
We know the answer very well!
Just look at Somalia!
I am a malaysian doctor who married a foreign doctor. I had resigned from service and worked abroad for 5 years. However we both moved back to Malaysia. I served the goverment for 5 years and was also awarded the AKC. Unfortunately my husband was not offered a jod although worked for 5 years an d came from a recognised university. After 5 years I am still not offered a permanent position and just merely on a yearly contract and my previous 5 years experience was not recognised , which means I needed to start from scratch again.
Above all the , although married to a Malaysian with 4 Malaysian children, he finds it a struggle for him to even apply for a car loan and etc. He is also required to pay a yearly levy of RM 2000.00.
After all the frustration, we both have gained Australian PR , and will soon be moving to Austalia for a better life. It is a shame that Malaysia has lost 2 well qualified, critical and dedicated professionals.
I am sorry to hear this but you are not the only people that I have seen in this situation! I have a paediatrician(foreigner) who is married to a Malaysian (a pathologist), got MRCPCH and have been working for the last 10 years in Malaysia. Despite that he was not allowed to apply for any subspeciality! It seems subsspeciality trainig is only for Malaysian. Even his PR has not been approved yet eventhough verbally they claim he will get it.