MalayMail-July 29
Malaysia’s chronic brain drain came back under the spotlight after a federal lawmaker mistranslated the term to “longkang otak” in Parliament earlier this month. While there are no official figures for tracking migration worldwide, estimates from the World Bank and United Nations put the number of people living outside their home countries to be between 215 million and 281 million globally, as of 2022. This meant around 3.6 per cent of the world’s population reside outside of their country of birth. This typically happens because these skilled workers are able to earn more abroad, have more access to opportunity, enjoy higher standards of living, or get more favorable treatment. The corollary is that their home country is then deprived of the same skill and talent that could be put towards its progress, often after having invested in the education of the departing workers. The issue was severe enough that in 2011, the government formed Talent Corporation Malaysia Berhad (TalentCorp) specifically to address the brain drain. TalentCorp, which comes under the Prime Minister’s Department, is tasked with crafting strategies to lure Malaysians back to the country by developing Malaysia into a dynamic and market-driven global talent hub. According to TalentCorp group chief executive officer Thomas Mathew, approximately 1.86 million Malaysians left the country in the past five decades. Extrapolated, this represents 5.6 per cent of the population, significantly higher than the global average of around 3.6 per cent. A recent Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM) study released on February 19 on Malaysian Citizens Working in Singapore and Brunei in 2022 and 2023 showed that Malaysians in Singapore are primarily skilled (39 per cent) and semi-skilled (35 per cent) workers. Read more at: https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2024/07/29/what-you-should-know-about-malaysias-brain-drain-and-whos-benefitting-from-it/144271
