New Straits Times-Apr 12
The Tranformasi Nasional 2050 (TN50) generation must be one happy lot.
The TN50 manifesto unveiled last night makes the case that one is young only once, and one better make good use of it.
And, the manifesto provides eight reasons and more to make good use of one’s youth. The range is wide: it promises to make youth — if they help themselves, that is — job creators, jobseekers and many things in between.
Traditional trades are given a fillip, too.
A generous RM200 million is being set aside for the next five years to groom agro-preneurs and sea-preneurs.
Issues of food security, which can only get worse, demand this move. And, there is money to be made in agriculture and fisheries.
Although we are living in the age of the Internet of Things, trades such as farming and aquaculture must not be left to wither away.
What these traditional trades need, though, is an injection of technologies, such as being practised in developed countries.
Japan is a good example where high-tech approach is used extensively in agriculture and fisheries.
In this land of limited space, robotic feeders and appetite sensors roam the length and breadth of the country’s farms, auto-feeding the right amount of feed to maintain the growth of the farmed fish, adverse weather notwithstanding.
It is only a small step to linking the equipment to smartphones and similar devices to have 24/7 connectivity.
Come 2050 or earlier, our TN50 seapreneur can have his cuppa in Kuala Kangsar while watching his salmon being fed in Semporna.
It is fair to assume that our youth want to go to school to arm themselves with knowledge and skills that will make them useful members of society. Of course, there will be errant youth, like anywhere else.
But, this is an exception rather than the rule.
The good news is that TN50 is offering errant youth what it calls Peluang Kedua, a second chance, so to speak.
Youth drop out of the mainstream because of absence of support either at home or at school. They need to be taught to value their lives.
Only then they can learn how to overcome obstacles that stand in their way to leading a good life. TN50’s second chance program will enable highly at-risk youth to transform their lives to succeed at school and society.
BN’s focus on youth is a right thing to do.
After all, they will be the ones who will lead the nation 20 to 30 years from now. Plus, Malaysia’s median age — the age that divides the population into equal halves — is 28.5 years.
If we take last year’s estimate of the country’s population to be 31. 4 million, then we have a pretty good number of youth in Malaysia.
Given Malaysia’s population growth rate of 1.37 per cent, half of our population should be 40 and younger in 2050, the target date for TN50.
Small wonder TN50 is giving youth so much attention. It will be so good to be young.
(first published in The New Straits Times – https://www.nst.com.my/opinion/leaders/2018/04/356195/tn50-manifesto-itll-be-good-be-young)
