LETTER | Let's not miss the boat, economic changes needed

LETTER | Minister in the Prime Minister's Department (economy) Mustapa Mohamed sounded the right alarm in his thoughtful comment in the New Straits Times on June 18 entitled "An opportunity to prepare Malaysians for jobs of the future".

This vital issue is indeed a major concern amongst all right-thinking Malaysians. Their own jobs, especially that of their children, and the future employment outlook, along with their wellbeing and welfare are all at stake. 

It is therefore pertinent that the minister responsible for socio-economic planning has shared his views and rich experience as a senior civil servant and former outstanding minister of trade, with the public.

Having been his colleague in the Treasury many years ago, I can say with conviction that the minister is serious in his analysis and plans for the future.

What he has proposed are necessary but may not be sufficient to solve our unemployment and other socio-economic problems for now and the future. But I believe the minister has an open mind and will welcome and consider all relevant views for inclusion in his economic planning.

There is a need for structural changes. The estimated unemployment rate at 5 percent is worrisome and it is possible that this high rate will worsen unless we reform the economic structure more significantly as follows:-

1. The minister has rightly proposed that we should ramp up our digital agenda. But we must also raise our standards of proficiency in the English language to get better access to knowledge presented in English worldwide. Of course, we could stick to the present practices but we will lose out to other competing countries for trade, investment and academic excellence.

Already we are losing out in the Institute for Management Development (IMD) World Competitiveness Ranking. We dropped five points from 22 to 27 in the ranking.

I hope the government will set up a committee to examine our shortfalls. They may show the structural weaknesses seeping into the system. We could send an expert team of our officials to see what we can learn from Singapore as they are ranked number one.

2. The minister's proposal to reduce migrant workers is laudable. But the estimate of just 2 million migrant workers may be too low if you include about another 2 million unregistered migrant workers. 

Furthermore, the government has to review our wage structure to reward our skilled workers such as frontline workers. If they can flock to Singapore to do the "dirty jobs", surely they would be happier to work at home if given better pay.

Here again, the basic needs of our society must be met as a matter of high priority as Covid-19 has revealed the poverty, hunger, and lack of housing, health and environmental protection which are serious weaknesses in our economy. These fundamental economic rights and others have been denied to millions of Malaysians. Here we cannot miss the boat again, please.

Education quality has declined at many levels from school to universities. Our international scores have not been internationally competitive enough.

This is because of the neglect of meritocracy where we went out for more quantity rather than quality education. This has a severe bearing on unemployment.

Indeed as the minister pointed out, the management guru Peter Drucker has stated that "the ultimate resource in economic development is people". 

But we have over the years driven away some of our best brains due to deprivation of opportunities to study and work here at home! It's within our power to also attract investment and jobs. 

So we must ask ourselves, how can we create opportunities and find jobs at home?

In conclusion, the minister has done very well to stress the opportunities to revitalise, recognise, strengthen and future proof our economy. It’s a big task and some of his sound proposals would need much more structural changes for us to sail more confidently into the open rough seas of severe competition. More has to be done to ensure that we do not, as the minister said, "miss the boat".

I would respectfully add that I hope Mustapa's bold foresight is shared by other broad-minded leaders or we will be left behind on the seashores, without much hope for more employment and greater progress.

The writer is chairperson of the Asli Centre of Public Policy Studies.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.