Human capital a draining issue
The Star
This year a number of reports have highlighted the talent outflow from the country, especially in the professional and skilled labour segments of the jobs market. Sectors of the economy that have been affected include construction, manufacturing and services.
Many professionals in the construction sector have moved to Vietnam, Singapore or the Middle East in pursuit of better pay and career prospects. The services sector has also seen an exodus of financial and hospitality specialists to countries in the region or to the Middle East and China.
Due to a lack of Malaysians willing to take up more labour-intensive jobs, a considerable proportion of the skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled jobs has gone to foreign migrant workers.
A property developer had recently said that it was difficult to get Malaysians interested in skilled construction work or to learn a skill in the building trades.
Amongst professionals, such as accountants, doctors and engineers, pay was but part of the reason for choosing to work abroad. Oftentimes, a higher quality of life and better education prospects for the children were the reasons. For those in research and development, the training quality – and not the infrastructure – was to be blamed for their move.
Red tape was another common complaint although, to be fair, the Government has acknowledged it and has made efforts to woo back a number of Malaysians working abroad via incentives.
A talent shortage is no joke, especially for a country whose economy achieved a year-on-year gross domestic product growth of 6.7% in the third quarter.
Further growth might be dampened by a lack of human capital and its nurturing and management.
If anybody remembered, Malaysia slipped to sixth place in a list of 10 South-East Asian countries in drawing foreign direct investments last year, largely because of a lack of competitiveness due to a human capital shortage and competition from lower-cost countries.
Corporations everywhere have wrestled with the problems of how best to nurture and manage human capital and also how to retain talent.
In Malaysia, its not just competition for talent across industries but also competition with other countries in emerging Asia, which have attracted a steady trickle of Malaysians.
Perhaps an example of how the private sector is trying to overcome the problem was the announcement by Gamuda Bhd group managing director Datuk Lin Yun Ling just over a week ago that the MMC Corp Bhd/Gamuda joint venture would be setting up a training academy for the RM12.5bil Ipoh to Padang Besar electrified double-tracking project.
The project, in its five-year lifespan, would create 108,000 jobs not only in construction and manufacturing but would have a spillover effect to other parts of the economy.
Lin said the academy would be running training courses for plant operators, supervisors and mechanics as well as training courses on carpentry, welding, steel fixing, masonry and concreting.
This might be what is needed for the retaining and nurturing of human capital although it would be interesting to know if more Malaysians, instead of foreign migrant workers, would be trained. When contacted, a Gamuda official said the academy was still in the planning stage.
