MARCH 8 — Last week, my story in the March issue for a Malaysian trade publication on the topic of “brain drain” was published and a fellow TMI columnist encouraged me to write a follow-up column on some of the conclusions that came about from that article.
Admittedly, while the 1,500-word article couldn’t fully do justice to this complex topic and the story was written from the worldview of finance professionals, it did provide some interesting opinions that I shall try to summarise in this column.
To set some perspective about brain drain, here are some hard facts to note:
• According to the World Bank, the number of Malaysian migrants rose by more than 100-fold in a 45-year period, from 9,576 Malaysians in 1960 to 1,489,168 Malaysians in 2005.
• The prime minister told Parliament last year that less than one per cent of 784,900 Malaysians working overseas have returned to the country during the past nine years, with Singapore having the highest number of Malaysians with 303,828 people, followed by Australia with 78,858.
• The top destination countries for Malaysians to emigrate to are Singapore, Australia, Brunei, the UK, the US, Canada, New Zealand, India, Japan and Germany, according to the World Bank.
• Local press reports quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Senator A. Kohilan Pillay as saying that 304,358 Malaysians had migrated from March 2008 till August 2009 compared with 139,696 Malaysians in 2007.
One of the key takeaways for me after writing the story is that this phenomenon is quite inevitable and that it happens everywhere around the world due to globalisation.
Globalisation is a topic on its own and is in itself a complex issue but one simplified way to look at it is to accept that knowledge-based, subject matter experts and their industry skill sets are highly sought after, and that the people seeking these skills do not regard national borders as a roadblock to reaching, and hence hiring skilled workers.
As more of the world’s commercial organisations seek to expand beyond their own backyard, they will always seek skilled workers. Keeping this in mind, an independent job recruiter I spoke with says that even the UK, the US and Singapore, widely regarded as the benchmark for having the most attractive jobs in the region, also suffer from brain drain and this can’t be stopped because the economy and opportunities therein are global.
This in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, according to a finance professional I spoke with who has been based in the Middle East for about five years.
Reasoning that many more Malaysian professionals migrate because of economic reasons as they can find higher paying jobs abroad, emigration, he says, has proven that Malaysians are willing and able to compete in the international job market.
Kudos to those who are succeeding and have succeeded. It demonstrates that Malaysians can be and, in some instances, are highly sought after in a globalised world, implying that Malaysians can hold their own in some of the most competitive economies in the world.
Opportunities abroad also bring another dimension that makes it very attractive for our skilled workers to go overseas — the fact that they are simply more exposed to work-related challenges and higher pay due to a stronger currency.
It is this very environment that helps them grow professionally, says Wan Saiful, who is the chief executive of independent think-tank Institute of Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS) Malaysia.
Analysing these factors would make one conclude that brain drain is inevitable and that there will always be some percentage of Malaysians migrating abroad for work purposes.
So while we can’t prevent the inevitable from happening, perhaps one way to look at brain drain is to tackle the issue of how to attract some of these skilled workers to contribute to the nation and to provide the best conditions — both physical and social — to minimise the migration of some of our best talents.
Wan Saiful believes that professionals are attracted by countries who offer the freedom and the satisfaction of being judged by what you do and which is based on merit. He says that they simply want better opportunities for their children and for their children to have equal opportunities with everyone.
He also feels that the continuing politicised atmosphere isn’t helping either. Too many things in Malaysia, he notes, are too highly politicised including government procurement, university places, the purchase of a house, and even personal issues like religion.
Besides these points, I believe that attracting talent is not just a matter of offering the best salaries per se. Talents that come to Malaysia also live here and this begs the question as to whether the country has a conducive enough environment and ecosystem to support their stay here.
Issues to do with housing, quality education for children, cultural diversity and permissiveness, environmental safety, as well as meritocracy, a level-playing field in the workplace and fair working conditions need to be addressed.
“But is Malaysia ready, when it cannot even offer that to its own people in the country?” asks a CEO of an investment organisation I spoke to last year.
This same executive also suggested that to address brain drain holistically, the focus should not merely be on highly qualified returning Malaysians, but it should also include focus on top Malaysian talent in the country and whether they have been optimised and allocated in the right places.
In other words, are the right people with the right skills doing the right things?
Yet another point, says this CEO, is that we should consider targetting migration of specific sector talents globally to Malaysia, particularly scientific talents from less developed countries but with a stronger and deeper scientific and technical talent base, such as those in India, China, and Middle Eastern countries.
“It's may be an easier sell than to bring back Malaysians home,” he says.
Finally, one executive of an international search company I spoke with suggested that one way to address the shortage of certain skill sets in Malaysia is to import the expertise of Malaysians living and working abroad instead of trying to bring them home physically.
Many of these Malaysians abroad have already settled down and have lives and job scopes which they will find hard to give up, says the partner of this firm. “Instead of trying to bring them home, why not approach them and get them to work on what is needed for Malaysia from where they are?” he asks.
Novel thought indeed, though I’m not sure if this would exactly work out, as their contribution may be at best tenuous and transitory in nature.
Regardless, these and more are some thoughts that came to me when I spoke to various people about the brain drain issue. Though it hardly scratches the surface, what I did find is that there is still hope for many of us in Malaysia.
As one professional who earned his PhD stripes in political science and deliberately came home to work here told me last year: “I sincerely believe that Malaysia has untapped potential, and I believe that this unfulfilled potential can be realised as the country is currently at a turning point in history.”
The truth is that we still have a lot of skilled people here and abroad, some of whom have migrated for their own reasons, while others have deliberately chosen to come home to work and ply their trade here. This shows that Malaysia still holds some promise for us who believe in her.
But address some of these fundamental challenges we must, and to do it urgently and in a bipartisan manner we should.
There is still time to do so, but is the government and all stakeholders involved sincerely and truly up for the task?
* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.
