APRIL 12 — South-east Asian countries that once used the economic growth chase strategy to transform themselves to become tiger economies are finding it hard to continue the sample strategy without incurring a severe burden to people and environment. While the current Malaysian government has openly recognised this burden to people and environment, they still do not attribute it back to the outdated continued economic strategy and vision that current and previous government adopted.
We in Basmala Australia, which is a South-east Asian Australian Islamic service and policy research NGO, have been observing the negative spill overs to down under. It was revealed this year in a report to the Joint Standing Committee on Migration at the Australian Parliament that the number of permanent protection visa applications lodged by Malaysian nationals over the past three years has nearly doubled despite the fact that out of more than 26,000 protection visa applications lodged by Malaysians, only 168 were successful. Malaysian politicians on both sides of politics need to recognise the number of Malaysians who are not satisfied with prospects in Malaysia and hence trying to migrate to Australia is not small.
Beyond these numbers who want to migrate to Australia for good, we have also seen data on the large number of Malaysians overstay in Australia to work temporarily. When we interviewed them, we found that they largely seek Australia for better wages. We also found that they typically work illegally in farming, cleaning, construction and restaurant industries in Australia. This simply refutes the claims by Malaysian employers and companies in these four same industries and even politicians that locals do not want to work in the jobs available in those industries. Instead the reality is Malaysians shun the wages and work conditions not those Malaysian jobs which they are willing to take on in Australia. It is clear Malaysia cannot be narrowly focusing on creating jobs in numbers and neglect the quality and wages of the jobs created to sustain people.
Penang, largely due to its NGOs, probably is the state/area in South East Asia that has generated the most robust debates and dialogues on sustainability of communities and environment. Yet we can see the Penang current and previous government stuck to an outdated economic vision of Penang developing a large number of real estate properties, with continual land reclamation to expand land supply and continual expansion of major road infrastructure. The economic vision also continues to include relentless expansion of industries with foreign direct investments attracted by offering cheap labour.
While Penang had too few alternative choices of economic strategies four decades ago, it makes no sense to keep continuing today an economic strategy which net benefit to communities and environment is not positive and where the state has other better alternatives to follow.
Politicians do not have to throw the baby out with the water. As Penang NGOs rightfully demand, they need to upgrade their policies to keep up to the needs of today. Instead of building roads to move cars, they instead need to shift to shaping an integrated transport infrastructure and service policy that moves people. Instead of constructing housing largely for foreign investors, they need to strike a balance with a sustainable delivery of affordable quality housing for present and future locals, preserving communities’ wellbeing, conserving heritage and negligible impact on environment. There is also a shift that is needed to preserve heritage for tourist dollars to include other higher priorities such as conserving memories for the purposes of healing and wellbeing of communities that live much longer today than ever before.
Most importantly instead of creating job numbers the state government need to be creating quality jobs per household and sustaining a minimum household income and employability through employment opportunities. Instead of aiming to bake the biggest economic pie, hoping for the benefits to trickle down and ignoring the fact often even crumbles do not reach a significant proportion of the population they need to start measuring benefits realised at each segment of population and plan economic policies accordingly.
Penang, in fact Malaysia too, requires a productivity revolution where restaurant, construction, agriculture and manufacturing industries restructure jobs and production process to create higher productivity jobs led by productivity pegged wages. Penang also needs to grow its economy through creative diversification guided closely by transparent policy processes and input from sectors that are more dynamic in innovation such as NGOs and applied research.
Instead of solely relying on construction and manufacturing industries, Penang needs to invest heavily in public, non-profit and research sectors of education and health industries. The benefits will add to balanced economic growth plus one segment of those industries will lead onto a positive spill over to export of goods and services which will add to higher economic growth strategies. A large segment of long term stable jobs with stable incomes need to be created in those industries. That is one key feature of developed economies that Penang, as well as Malaysia, is clueless on achieving in its march to become a developed economy.
Fundamentally Penang needs to use this opportunity of New Malaysia to shift to New Penang that is more strategic, measured and successful in benefits realisation for its people, environment through its policies. Creative innovation needs to be the central driver in policy making and implementation area. This requires Penang government to restructure its state civil service to be more lean and efficient and integrated with more innovative players in the economy such as NGOs, applied research sector and private sector. Politicians are also at a very timely juncture to assess the performance of civil servants at senior and mid levels and put in place the necessary teams for the next and final lap.
*Ansari Zainul Abideen is an economist based in Australia. He heads Basmala Australia which is a South-east Asian Islamic NGO focused on services and applied research.
**This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
