He said the incentives offered by Talent Corp were meant to “dovetail” with existing programmes by companies to engage with skilled Malaysians abroad but stressed that the effort had to be private sector-led.
“A person who comes back ultimately has to come back to a job,” he told The Malaysian Insider here today.
Merican explained that a key part of Talent Corp’s responsibilities was to build networks with individual companies and key sectors in order to identify “priority talent gaps”.
He said an example of such “public-private partnership” was Talent Corp’s fast-tracking of skilled workers needed by the electronics industry in Penang.
“We see ourselves as really working with industry because, from a Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) perspective... the industry is clearly the client,” he said.
Merican added that there was “no point” trying to tackle the structural causes of Malaysia’s massive brain drain at this point in time as that would likely lead to inaction.
“If you start having that conversation then you’ll end up just doing nothing,” he said.
He stressed that it was more effective to focus on small steps that could be taken now to help achieve the long-term goals of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s economic reform agenda.
According to a World Bank report released earlier this week, some one million Malaysians live and work abroad, mostly in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries and Singapore.
The “Malaysia Economic Monitor: Brain Drain” report shows that 54 per cent of the Malaysian diaspora resided in Singapore while 15 per cent went to Australia, 10 per cent to the US and 5 per cent to the UK.
Malaysians abroad have cited social injustice in Malaysia as well as better career prospects and higher wages overseas as the main reasons for leaving.
