Racial politics and Brain Drain
My daughter, who is in her final year medicine in Auckland, told me that a team of Singapore recruitment officers have just visited Auckland and talked to the Malaysian students there, offering job and training prospect for the final year students once they graduate. My daughter also told me that over the last few years, quite a lot of her Malaysian seniors, after graduating from medical courses in NZ, have gone to Singapore to work as house-officers and subsequently stayed back in Singapore for their postgraduate training.
Similar teams are sent to Australia and UK for recruiting Malaysians there to work in Singapore.
About a year ago, in one of the articles in Reuters, this was reported:
Malaysia is counting on bright, ambitious people like Tan Chye Ling for its future, to lead it away from manufacturing and into the knowledge age.
‘I felt much suppressed in Malaysia,’ said Tan, who moved to neighboring Singapore, the region’s pace-setter for biotech investment, after a decade of study and research in Malaysia.
‘I have benefited from the better research environment and salary scheme here. Things are much smoother,’ she said by phone from the National University of Singapore where she is studying dust mites and allergies.
Tan estimates that 60 percent of the research teams she works with in Singapore are from Malaysia, despite her country’s efforts over several years to develop a biotech industry.
The Malaysian government unveiled plans last March to spend $553.3 million over five years to boost research, attract foreign investment and build new facilities. But its efforts are wasted unless it can retain more talented people like Tan. ’By the time we have the research environment in place, every other country would have taken a slice of the biotech investment pie,’ said Iskandar Mizal, head of the state-run Malaysian Biotech Corporation which oversees the government’s strategy.
There is a serious problem facing “Malayia” and that is the problem of Brain Drain. Why are Malaysians overseas not coming back to work?
But, as I say, pay is not the main problem. The living expenses Overseas is high. And for a person working overseas, the loneliness and the stress level is also high. So not everyone opts to work overseas because of pay. Many would not mind to work for lesser pay if they can stay near to their loved ones.
Why do people choose to work overseas, away from their loved one?
Malaysia has many state-of-the-art hospitals and research centers, which may even be the envy of many overseas countries. But hardware alone would not attract these experts o come home. In the medical fields, I have so many friends /classmates working overseas, many in world renowned centers.
Why do they do that?
Some of my classmates and friends did come back as specialists. After working a few years ( many lasted a few months) , most get disillusioned and went off. There is really not much prospect of career advancement. How many can hope to become a professor, even when they are an acknowledged expert in their field? On the other hand , lesser beings are being promoted to professorship for doing much less.
How many of them can have any say about how things are to be run? How many of them can blend into the local team where the work attitude is vastly different from that overseas?
In everyday life, some become disillusioned with the corruption, the red tape and “tidak apa” attitude of the officialdom. For an overseas doctor applying to work home, the application can take up to 6 months to get approved, whereas, Singapore sends teams overseas to recruit them on the spot, giving them forms to fill and offering them jobs immediately as long as they pass their final examination. See the difference?
It is the sense of being wanted and being appreciated that make these people stay overseas. Back here, they are often made to feel that they are of a lower class; they do not feel wanted and they do not feel appreciated…. That is the main reason.
For those with children , the education system puts them off. Even school children can feel being discriminated, one glaring example is the 2 systems in PreUniversity education.
All these make them pack their bags and off they go again, leaving behind their parents perhaps, siblings,friends they grew up together, favouite food that is often not available overseas. No one likes to be like this; circumstances and a sense of being recognised for their worth make them go away…It is really sad.
Parents spend huge amount of money educating them, but the ones who benefit are the Singaporeans, the Americans, the Australian, the British and so on. As long as race politics is not done away with, this problem of brain drain will continue and Malaysia will always lack behind the advanced countries, no matter how many twin towers and Putra Jayas we build.
End
Comment: maybe that’s the intention of BN government. Let Malaysia be brain-drain-ed so that the intelligent ones won’t stay behind to challenge BN government.
we can argue till christmas 2020 over whether it is opportunities are racially divided, but one thing is clear, meritocracy has been placed in the car boot. I remember my secondary days, when I was a lucky few that get to study in an ‘elite’ secondary school. And I meant by ‘elite’ is that the school’s syllabus is directly handled by the state. What I noticed is that, 90 – 95% of my classmates are Malays, whereas the rest are, well, ‘lain-lain’… I was fine with that, in fact, I still keep in contact with quite a number of my Malay secondary school friends. What I was not alright with was after PMR and SPM. After PMR, a handful of my friends left for other institutions. I got to know later that they went admitted to some matriculation course that would fast track their education. After SPM, it was time to apply for tertiary programmes and scholarships. More than half the scholarships offered, stated ‘hanya Bumiputera’. And some of the programmes and scholarships that did not state so formally, we all knew that there were racial quota in place as well.
In the end, I opted for ASEAN Scholarship which got me to Singapore, and I’ve remained in Singapore since then. One of my application for post-SPM programme got through, but the course offered under the programme was not what I wanted, in fact, it was not one of the courses that I’d indicated. Without doubt, the ASEAN scholarship is a better choice. Mind you, the course offered to me would have meant that I would need to take up an education loan from the government.
My secondary school offers post-SPM studies as well, i.e. Form 6. And what became noticably apparent was that, the racial percentage shifted- 50% to 80% of the students were now ‘lain-lain’. While my well-off ‘lain-lain’ friends went to private colleagues and have become very successful since, my friends left in Form 6 were either offered unwanted programmes or simply could not afford to go for private colleagues. Mind you, most of my friends who studied Form 6 are some of the brightest kids in the class, but yet, they were not offered scholarships or good courses.
Like I’ve said, meritocracy has been placed in the car boot for way too long. A transparent meritocracy system, especially on education has to be in place. Aid, loan and scholarship should not been abused (how many times have you heard of the richest obtaining government aid or government scholarship?). Students should be nurtured properly to be competitive, and not to be ‘tidak apa’.