Wednesday October 20, 2010

Grooming future talents to come home

The Star Says

IT is the kind of story that makes one sit up and exclaim, Malaysia’s got talent!

Here is a 23-year-old Malaysian who not only won a plethora of awards to become the top student in the final year law examinations at Cambridge, but who has the college dean gushing over how talented and exceptional he is. Not to mention that he also plays the classical guitar.

Upon closer reading, we learn that this young man’s educational achievements had been mapped out from the time he did his A-levels at the Temasek Junior College in Singapore on an Asean scholarship provided by the republic’s Education Ministry.

Understandably, after getting his degree, Ipoh-born Tan Zhongsan has returned to Singapore where he awaits his posting to the republic’s Legal Service in January.

Tan Zhongsan’s story seems familiar enough and underlies the difficulty we face as we seek to bring home skilled human capital in our quest to become a high income nation by 2020.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak told Parliament last week that over the past nine years, less than 1% of 784,900 Malaysians working overseas has returned to the country.

Singapore has the highest number of Malaysians with 303,828 people, followed by Australia with 78,858. The other countries with sizeable numbers of Malaysians are Brunei, the Philippines, the United States, Britain, Indonesia, Canada, Germany and India.

The soon-to-be-operational Talent Corporation will have its hands full seeking to persuade people to come home.

But as we can see from Tan’s case, there is also a need to look at how Malaysians are wooed away in the first place.

The Asean scholarship has benefited many young Malaysians like Tan. It is not as broad-based as its name implies. It would not be wrong to say that through this scholarship, the bright young sparks of the different Asean countries are being identified for the benefit of one country. And this has been going on for years.

Let’s face reality. All scholarship providers have conditions before they part with their money. The most basic condition would be for the recipient to be bonded to the provider for a number of years.

There is a need, therefore, for us to look at how we send our scholars abroad and what are the efforts we take to ensure that they come home to serve.

We also need to look at what kind of scholarships are being provided and the kind of courses that most of the money is channelled to.

To be a high income nation, we need a broad range of talents and not just those in the traditional fields of medicine, engineering, law and accountancy.

Scholarship providers, be they from the government or the private sector, must relook their portfolio and venture into areas that truly test the boundaries of creativity and global demands.

As for bringing back talents, the Talent Corporation must be clear in its objectives and completely transparent in its methods. Don’t forget, cynicism runs deep among Malaysians. Already, coffeeshop and meeting room chats centre on whether it would become a way for people to travel on taxpayers’ money on the pretext of hunting down talents overseas.

This corporation shouldn’t only be venturing abroad. This quest to convince Malaysian professionals to return has been likened to trying to close the barn after the horse has bolted. Or rather, for a more accurate analogy, to lasso the horse and drag it back into the barn.

Much has also been said that it should also figure out how to nurture and keep talented people before they leave and never come back. Again, look at what Singapore has been doing, which is to siphon off a huge amount of our talent pool every year, by offering scholarships and then providing jobs with really good prospects.

Can the Talent Corp figure out how to plug that drainhole first?

And when it woos overseas Malaysians, we would like the corporation to be very choosy. In medicine, for example, do we bring home plastic surgeons because it will help the cause of health tourism or do we bring back oncologists, cardiologists and gerontologist to address modern-day ailments like heart diseases, stroke, obesity, ageing, etc?

In the areas of ITC, will we be content with common cyberworkers or will we only seek the highly-skilled ones who are already making a fortune and having fun in the Silicon Valley or Mumbai?

And in law, do we train lawyers in the same familiar areas or do we train them to be able to operate globally on issues that transcend borders even if they make Malaysia their home?

Unless we are prepared to look at things from a fresh perspective, it will be difficult not only to bring home the talents, but also to prevent future talents from being taken from our shores forever.