By Tan Sri Ramon Navaratnam

YB Dato' Seri Mustapa Mohamed sounded the right alarm in his thoughtful comment in NST dated June 18 entitled "An opportunity to prepare Malaysians for jobs of the future".

This vital issue is indeed a major concern among all right-thinking Malaysians. Their own jobs, especially those of their children and the future employment outlook, their well-being and welfare are all at stake.

It is therefore pertinent that the minister responsible for socioeconomic planning in the Prime Minister's Department has shared his views and rich experience as a senior civil servant and outstanding former minister of trade, with us 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 socioeconomic 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.

Need structural changes

The estimated unemployment rate of 5% is worrisome. But 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 English in order to get better access to knowledge in the English language 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 IMD (Institute for Management Development) World Competitiveness Ranking. We dropped five points from 22 to 27 in the ranking.

I would hope the government needs to 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 there is in Singapore which we can learn and improve, as they were ranked Number One.

2. The minister's proposal to reduce the number of foreign workers is laudable. But the estimate of just two million foreign workers may be too low if you include about another two million unregistered foreign workers. Furthermore, the government has to review our wag structure to reward our skilled workers and frontline workers doing the 3D jobs. If they can flock to Singapore to do the 'dirty jobs', surely they will be happier to work at home if offered better pay.

3. Here again the basic needs of our society must be met as a matter of high priority, as COVID-19 has revealed that poverty, hunger, lack of housing, health and environmental protection 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.

4. Education quality has declined at many levels from school to universities. Our international scores have not been internationally competitive enough because of the neglect of meritocracy where we went out more for quantity than quality education. This has a severe bearing on unemployment.

Indeed, as the minister has pointed out, 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.

So, we must ask ourselves how we can create opportunities to generate and find jobs at home.

Conclusion

The minister has done very well to stress the opportunities to revitalize , recognize, 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, as the minister says, "Let's not miss the Boat".

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

(Tan Sri Ramon Navaratnam is the Chairman of ASLI Center for Public Policy Studies.)