Messy politics drags down Malaysians’ confidence in country

KUALA LUMPUR — The messy socio-political situation in Malaysia is creating a lack of confidence in the economy, leading to more young Malaysians studying or living abroad to consider staying put in foreign lands, said Mr Johan Mahmood Merican, who leads TalentCorp, the agency tasked with wooing back Malaysian talents from overseas.

Mr Johan said a major concern of students and Malaysians living abroad was the state of the country’s politics, which many believe indicated a lack of viable job prospects for local talents. As such, the reality that there were vast opportunities for a diverse range of career experiences in Malaysia “often gets lost”.

“The young people we meet, they’re very interested in the politics back home. But they read (about) our politics and then draw an inference that the economy is in bad shape, when the bigger picture is that the country’s economy is still growing, and we have exciting job prospects for talents in various industries, ” Mr Johan told The Malaysian Insider.

“In many sectors, companies are still aggressively hiring here, and there are more and more regional multinationals in Malaysia who are looking for bright talents,” he said.

Mr Johan said part of the challenge of TalentCorp was to get the message that there are “real opportunities for an exciting career” in many growing industries to Malaysians abroad.

“At a time when banks are consolidating all around the world, in Malaysia and the South-east Asia region, we’re expanding to become multinationals, for example. We want the students to be aware of the opportunities so they make informed decisions,” he said.

According to a World Bank report, there were 385,000 Malaysians working in Singapore in 2010, 116,193 in Australia, and 69,939 in the United Kingdom. More than 50 per cent of all those working abroad were tertiary educated, the report said.

Mr Johan said Middle East countries and China were not included in the study, but that those countries were also “major markets and key attractions” for Malaysians because of the high salaries offered.

Malaysia, like most middle-income nations, was suffering from a “high brain-drain intensity”, as almost one in every 10 tertiary-educated citizens is working abroad, he said. “We’re in an environment where we’re talent hungry and we’re losing top talent ... of course, we have a problem,” he said.

The only way to counter this problem was to maintain an equilibrium between the number of Malaysians who were leaving, and cultivating the local workforce plus attracting more foreign talents, said Mr Johan.

Since 2011, TalentCorp has approved 3,000 applications by individuals wanting to return to Malaysia under the Returning Expert Programme, which offers tax incentives as one of the many “cushioning” initiatives to encourage Malaysians abroad to relocate back home. “There’s a lot more room for improvement. I wish the numbers would be much higher than they are, but we’re still making significant changes in so many areas.”

He debunked the common belief that the majority of those leaving the country were non-Malays, saying that in recent years, the demographics of Malaysians choosing to work or live overseas transcended racial lines.

“I believe it’s time we look at this problem through a different lens. Profiling of this group of talents would be more accurately portrayed by their income levels, their ability and exposure, and not race,” he said.

He said TalentCorp was trying to address the main reasons Malaysians choose to work and live abroad, including issues of income, professional opportunity and liveability.

“With the salary issue, it’s a real problem especially with countries like Singapore being able to offer sometimes more than double what our graduates here can get. So we are working to bring up the salary scale through the Economic Transformation Programme, but that’s something that takes some time to do,” he said.

Other initiatives by TalentCorp to make connections between industry and students, and government efforts to address issues such as rising crime rates and a faltering education system through the Government Transformation Programme, would hopefully stem the outflow of talent, said Mr Johan.

“We try to address the very reasons why people leave, and create a working and living environment here in Malaysia that meets those concerns,” he said. “Hopefully, this reduces the incentive to leave.” THE MALAYSIAN INSIDER