GEORGE TOWN, Aug 26 — The federal government has introduced multi-pronged initiatives to draw overseas talent back and also to retain local talents to avert a brain drain problem in the nation, said Talent Corp chief executive officer Johan Mahmood Merican.
Though the nation had only successfully brought back 2,105 Malaysian professionals from overseas through TalentCorp since 2011, Johan is confident that the government-owned organisation will be able to widen the scale of its various initiatives to secure talents back and to retrain those already working in the country in years to come.
“TalentCorp is not only about drawing back talent from overseas but we also have other initiatives, one to retain and improve our local existing talents, two to draw in foreign talents in fields where there is a shortage in experts and now this year, a focus on retaining local women talent in the workforce,” he said.
He lamented that TalentCorp, which is set up under the Prime Minister’s Department, is often “misunderstood” especially in the recent uproar over its whopping RM65 million operating costs in the past three years.
It was widely reported that TalentCorp spent RM65 million to bring back 2,105 Malaysians from overseas under its Returning Expert Programme (REP), a figure revealed by Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Abdul Wahab Omar in Parliament last month.
TalentCorp or Talent Corp Malaysia Bhd has since issued a press statement clarifying that the total RM65 million it was allocated was used to develop various programmes under its three different initiatives, not just for the REP.
Johan pointed out that TalentCorp has been actively implementing programmes such as improving the skills of local undergraduates to improve employability, facilitating career fairs for Malaysian students abroad and also facilitating the bringing in of foreign talents through its Residence Pass-Talent initiative.
“This year, our new initiative is on retaining women talent in the workforce locally as there is a growing number of women leaving the workforce for various reasons,” he said in an interview with The Malay Mail Online recently.
He pointed out that the Malaysian government recognised the importance of women in the workforce that it had included an aim to increase women’s participation in the workforce from the current 49.5 per cent to 55 per cent by 2015 under the 10th Malaysia Plan.
“Last year, in the 2013 Budget, tax incentives were also announced for companies with in-house childcare or that provides childcare subsidy allowance to their employees,” he said.
He said these are just the few initiatives, on top of TalentCorp’s initiatives, that the federal government introduced for the local talents in the workforce.
On the development of local talents to meet with industry demands, Johan said TalentCorp was allocated RM15 million to introduce the FasTrack Programme for fresh graduates in the Electronics and Electrical sector in Penang.
Working jointly with Penang Skills Development Centre (PSDC) on this programme, he said about 400 local talents would be on the “fast track” to go into research and development (R & D) of the E & E sector.
“This is to support the country’s economic transformation as we need to nurture local talent so that they are adept and industry-ready in a knowledge-economy,” he said.
The FasTrack Programme, introduced in 2011, is a 12-month apprenticeship programme where engineers are trained to become R & D engineers in the short period of time.
Though the programme only saw 101 enrolment (in 2011), 134 in 2012 and 135 this year, Johan said it is a pilot project where they can establish a successful programme to train local graduates into industry-ready talents.
“It is through this programme that we are able to identify the course structures to use to train and ensure the quality of our talents which we could later incorporate into our universities,” he said.
TalentCorp may not have big figures to boast as a measurement of what it had achieved in terms of attracting professional Malaysians overseas but Johan said they are doing all they could to implement all of its initiatives to develop and improve the local pool of talents as part of the nation’s economic transformation programme.
“We have our hands full to implement all these initiatives on a larger scale so it is not only about about bringing Malaysians back but also about developing our existing talents, improving them, retaining them in the workforce and even about bringing in foreign experts in certain fields to contribute to our economic transformation,” he said.
