Human Capital Loss?
Is this a serious issue? It may seem like it is a small issue or just utterly a nonsense issue brought up by an amateur blogger. This issue require special attention from all of Malaysians including government, private sector and every part of us since we actually encourage the huge amount of foreign workers in Malaysia while neglecting our own Malaysians.
I’m not saying about those workers in mamak stall, cleaner, maid, and what so ever in that kind of thing but in professional job. Let me tell you about what is the real picture of the situation. For example, in MAS, our national carrier, a local stewardess is paid around RM3k/month. With reducing cost as the reason, the company laid off the local stewardess and replaced her with a Japanese stewardess with RM10k/month. Since the salary follows Japanese salary structure, the company must pay a huge bonus to the Japanese stewardess regardless of profit or loss every year. This is done to enhance MAS image but at the same time, killing off local human capital when the country is gearing up towards promoting human capital development. The frustrated local stewardess migrate to other countries who will appreciate her skill and the country has just lost another human capital. This scenario loop lots of times…
My personal experience regarding this, earlier this month I went to UTM for project site visit under my Ministry. There are several research projects which are funded by Ministry to be monitored their progress. Initially, it was running pretty smoothly until there was a researcher brought a master student together to present the project. What irritate me was the student is a foreign student. During presentation, the student presented the project more than the researcher itself, when the researcher was asked about the project, the researcher referred to the student and sometimes they argued about which milestone has been completed.
Oh my gosh! Didn’t the researcher realize how the expertise gained from the project has fallen to the foreigner’s brain? When the project is completed, the student will go back to their origin and share what the student has learned in Malaysia? At the same time, opportunity for local student to learn was denied to due to cheaper cost, easier rules to employ foreign student..Another human capital loss.
During a conversation with a professor, she mentioned that the country’s policy itself encouraging outsider to come while denying local people opportunity. For example, in scholarship, it is very hard for a local student to get a scholarship although he scored >3.5 CGPA above while for a foreign student, >3.0 CGPA is more than enuff for them to secure a local scholarship from local university, this goes the same for university entrance, getting a place in university is hard for local student but for foreign student, we even help them to get a place, is this how to develop world class human capital??
There is clearly a lot of works need to be done to protect local people..
It’s like a Malay proverb, “Kera di hutan disusukan, anak di rumah mati kelaparan”.
It’s time to start taking our human capital issue seriously rather than saying “modal insan,modal insan” everday and nothing good come out of it..
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