Nine years after the outbreak of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, Malaysia seems to be losing out to Indonesia on all fronts in social, economic and political reforms. Now, there are also quantitative indicators showing that Malaysia's primary-school education has lagged even behind some countries on the African continent such as Kenya, Malawi, Senegal and South Africa.
posted by James Wong Wing-On at 8:51 PM
6 Comments:
really? i thought malaysia is a developed country already, though singapore is better
interesting
really? i thought malaysia is a developed country already, though singapore is better
interesting
Hi James,
You are very right that we are slowly but surely losing the battle for international competitiveness vs. our peers and neighbours.
I'm basically a non-political type, too busy with work...but more and more I realise the politicians are creating a big mess...
I work for a Malaysian company which bids in the international market for manufacturing contracts. These products could potentially be made in Malaysia, China, Thailand, Indonesia....Its a tough world out there.
The company's efficiency, and in a broader sense, Malaysia's overall ability to compete is an issue I have to struggle with every day.
Its no small deal to the Malaysian economy. We pay back to the nation a lot of taxes every year. We employ thousands of Malaysians, good, solid jobs. Our Malaysian suppliers employ a lot of people ...and so on.
And we are slowly losing the fight...
First, our supposedly best people - university graduates. Many of them cannot express themselves properly in English, can't put up a case to reason for or against an idea. By the way, that applies quite broadly across all the races. Ethnic Chinese have the advantage of Mandarin in communicating with China,but English is still very much the main channel when multiple countries are involved. My kids attend an SRJK(C) , but I think the Chinese school system has some serious problems as well. I don't want to go into that here...maybe some other time.
I'm an Australian graduate from 20 years ago (just like you, I believe), and the standard of the average Malaysian University graduate these days embarasses me. I do meet and hire excellent graduates, but I'm more worried about the average.
The majority of our employees are entry level. And the school system just isn't providing them with basic skills they need at work. Language skills, basic matchs and so on. We have no way to compete with China in direct cost and easy labour availability. We have to compete with better individual worker skills and productivity, but that's very difficult righ now.
The education system from primary school to secondary to Colleges and University has just been a political football to be kicked around. To top it all it is now being run by a Kris-wielding racialist.
In the recent week-long conference of the ruling party, all the talk was on racial supremacy and special rights. No ideas about how we are going to do a better job at growing the economy. To redistribute wealth , you have to first create it.
Zero ideas on how we are going to compete more effectively in the international marketplace.
How are we going to WIN as MALAYSIA ? From PM to the kris-wielding guy, ZERO ideas.
forget about competing with China or India. Just hope Malaysia won't lose out to Vietnam or Indonesia in the next 20 years.
sigh.....!
back to kl already-ah? come out to yam-char-lah if u r free...
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