Racial politics and Brain Drain
By Dr. HSU
The most important asset of a country is not its natural resources, but rather human resources. This is especially true in a knowledge based economy, which of course will be the trend in future if not already the trend in most of the western countries.
My daughter, who is in her final year medicine in Auckland, told me that a team of Singapore recruitment officers have just visited Auckland and talked to the Malaysian students there, offering job and training prospect for the final year students once they graduate. My daughter also told me that over the last few years, quite a lot of her Malaysian seniors, after graduating from medical courses in NZ, have gone to Singapore to work as house-officers and subsequently stayed back in Singapore for their postgraduate training.
Similar teams are sent to Australia and UK for recruiting Malaysians there to work in Singapore.
About a year ago, in one of the articles in Reuters, this was reported:
Malaysia is counting on bright, ambitious people like Tan Chye Ling for its future, to lead it away from manufacturing and into the knowledge age.
But the 32-year-old scientist, a post-graduate in molecular biology, is not counting on Malaysia to look after her future.
‘I felt much suppressed in Malaysia,’ said Tan, who moved to neighboring Singapore, the region’s pace-setter for biotech investment, after a decade of study and research in Malaysia.
‘I have benefited from the better research environment and salary scheme here. Things are much smoother,’ she said by phone from the National University of Singapore where she is studying dust mites and allergies.
Tan estimates that 60 percent of the research teams she works with in Singapore are from Malaysia, despite her country’s efforts over several years to develop a biotech industry.
