Attracting talents: How can things change when the mentality stays

Dr M - if people want to go, let them go

Lim Sue Goan

To successfully lure the talents, our outdated policies must change and the environment must be more open. We have been talking so much about attracting talents since the days of Dr Mahathir. Why are we still talking the same thing today?


Before we analyse how to attract foreign talents and how to lure local talents back to Malaysia, let us first explore how the European football clubs grab the top footballers.

The football clubs of Britain, Spain, Germany and Italy often go all out to acquire professional footballers during the summer or winter. As such, acquisition costs often hit record highs, such as the 80 million pound transfer fee paid to Cristiano Ronaldo and the 100 million euro tag Barcelona’s Lionel Messi easily fetches.

Football clubs are willing to fork out such sky-high prices and offer 300,000 euros a week to their players because they are slightly different from other footballers in that they are able to make significant breakthroughs in their football careers and can deliver the goals.

No one should underestimate this little difference, for it is such minor detail that determines the success or failure of a person. This also explains why talents are worth this much.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak yesterday announced the establishment of Talent Corporation Malaysia to lure overseas talents back to the country through the relaxation of service contracts for PSD scholarship holders as well as residence permits. This is a move in the right direction as the country lacks the conditions and resources to compete heads-on with other countries to attract foreign talents. As such, the first thing we should do is to attract our own professionals to return home.

There are currently 700,000 Malaysians working overseas, including talented people across all professional fields. If we can successfully get them to return, we no longer need to worry about the economic transformation programme.

In the past, our government officials used to trash our own talents which were later picked up by other countries seeing them as invaluable assets.

According to World Bank statistics, there were only 9,576 Malaysians living abroad in 1960. The number of migrants from Malaysia rose sharply to 1,489,168, an increase of nearly 100 times, in just 45 years. The number of Malaysians relocating to Singapore jumped from 120,104 in 1981 to 303,828 in 2000. The number of Malaysian migrants to Australia, meanwhile, went up to 92,337 in 2007.

In order to attract talented people to return to the country, we need to carefully identify our problems and address them. These talented people are no fools. Shallow policies aimed at attracting them, such as the government’s 2001 plan to encourage professionals to return, will not work.

It was reported that 400 people responded positively to the government's call but only one still remains in the country today.

Practising in Singapore, Asia's top liver transplant specialist Dr. Tan Kai Chah actually grew up in Malaysia’s Fraser's Hill. In 2003, he slammed Malaysia's Organ Transplant Act as out of date and was soon rebuked by a senior officer from the Ministry of Health who said he should practise elsewhere.

And he ended up practising in neighbouring Singapore.

Last year, the Asian Centre for Liver Diseases and Transplantation (ACLDT) at Singapore's Gleneagles Hospital went public on the Australian Stock Exchange through a reverse takeover, and Dr. Tan Kai Chah was its chief.

If Dr. Tan had practised and imparted his knowledge in Malaysia, the country could have become the leading liver transplant centre in Asia, not Singapore.

To successfully lure the talents, our outdated policies must change and the environment must be more open. We have been talking so much about attracting talents since the days of Dr. Mahathir. Why are we still talking the same thing today?

- Sin Chew Daily