A Yuppie's Progress By Effendi Azmi HashimMANY people have asked me why I came back to work in Malaysia. After all, I don’t have a scholarship tied round my neck and had a number of job opportunities in London.
Having lived there for so long, a lot of people expected me to continue to live there and end up being a grey coat in the city.
So when I took up the offer to work in KL, and packed up and left ol’ Blighty, friends and relatives from both sides of the hemisphere were equally surprised.
I always used to put it down to the words of my late father, which still echo in my head. “How do you know you don’t want to work in Malaysia if you’ve never actually worked there?”
Short, sweet and straight to the point. At the time, it was the killer statement that made me return to KL and give it a shot.
As I’ve said in previous articles, I’ve never looked back. On the whole I’m pretty glad to have come home, and I have yet to change my mind. In fact, I still strongly believe that this is a great place to live and work (and I say this despite being offered another chance to work in Europe again).
However, I am always stunned at the number of times I hear people telling me how much of a fool I am for not having stayed in London. “But why did you come back to work here?” is a common cry.
There are professionals in Malaysia who wouldn’t think twice about leaving the country to work elsewhere on this planet. Thankfully, some of them just want to gain some overseas experience in the belief it will help their resume and make them more marketable here.
However, some really have a genuine desire to leave the country and go back to the place they studied or spent some considerable time in.
But the thing is, if these people were not “incredibly smart” or unable to contribute something significant to Malaysian society, then it probably wouldn’t matter so much.
But a lot of them are people who are really smart and could give a lot back to this country. It’s tragic when you think about it. Some of our true national talent wanting to dispense their immense grey matter elsewhere.
(Sadder still, when you think that there are also sub standard people staying back, thinking that they’re talented and believing they’re making a contribution.)
So it’s good to know the Government sees this as a serious problem. Just like a company, Malaysia as a country has to look at retaining its talent. The Government is constantly looking at ways to attract Malaysians who are working abroad to come home.
Imagine, in total, 30,000 Malaysian graduates are thought to work in foreign countries. Some have held scholarships in top universities overseas and have decided to stay at the end of their studies.
One of the plans to address this issue of brain drain was to reach out to them by making it attractive for them to return, and by highlighting opportunities for them in Malaysia.
Renewed efforts to lure home Malaysians working overseas were announced in an attempt to reverse the country’s brain drain. Proposed perks include better pay, improved contracts and earlier retirement, as well as increased investments in research and development.
A good start, but the way I see it, it only goes so far (meaning, not far enough).
Most of the people who told me they wanted to leave the country said it wasn’t necessarily because of the incentives, citing other reasons.
Like a company, sometimes you don’t leave because of the pay or the perks or the compensation. It’s about the culture. I seem to see that people leave the country disillusioned with what they see on the whole.
Whatever opportunities or salaries you then offer will make no difference whatsoever.
These are the issues that also need to be addressed if we’re to continue to keep and attract our “best”.
A couple of my friends actually make the effort to talk to people who are “fed up” or just want to pack up and leave.
For those who slip through, at least we know that they gave it a go here and left on an “informed” basis.
Then again, for those thousands out there who never even made the effort to come back in the first place and try to “make a difference” here, that is tantamount to disservice to our country, our home and our roots, and above all, disservice to themselves!
Effendi Azmi Hashim, born and raised in London, now lives in Kuala Lumpur as a regular yuppie but with a sense of humour. E-mail him at starmag@thestar.com.my.