MALAYSIA as a nation is endowed with luscious greenery, rich minerals, breathtaking landscapes, scrumptious food and awesome people. But we are now concerned about religious tolerance, economic performance, unemployment rate and graduate employability.
The recent Ranstad Workmonitoring report shows that 71 per cent of Malaysians prefer to relocate abroad if they can keep their jobs with current employers. I think it all boils down to poor human capital management. We failed to focus on the planet and people but diverted all our attention to profit.
South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Brazil and South Africa built cars, ships, airplanes, space shuttles, but everything had a research and development element to it. Equal effort was also paid to maintenance.
The Rubber Research Institute (RRI) and the Palm Oil Research Institute Malaysia (PORIM) were the two great institutions that were serious in developing the rubber industry and palm oil, and those were some of our glorious years. Their innovations transformed our nation into a world player. The world was knocking on our doors, wanting to learn from us.
It is unfortunate that we are busy bickering about our differences. We are turning our attention to what we should eat, rather than feeding someone who needs food or water. We want to know if you are of a certain religion before we offer our help.
Even during an accident, some of us offer help based on the other person’s skin colour. We even had fatalities involving Malaysians of different faiths arguing over an accident. This is extremely sad, and it hits me even harder since I personally know the mother of a car accident victim who is still shaken by the incident.
We need to go beyond race and religion. Our strength is in our diversity. We cannot allow anybody to divide us any further. We must stand united. We must practise “live and let live”.
Instead, foreigners are flourishing in Malaysia. They even run shops! Most of the grass cutters, landscapers, electricians, television and refrigerator repair workers are foreigners.
Today, we see people freely commenting on issues that are sensitive and provocative in nature. Though we welcome openness and transparency, we must be mindful that we are a multi-racial and multi-religious country where we cannot debate many issues in the open. We must only promote multi-racial and multi-religious programmes or events starting from schools.
We must focus on building a Malaysia that will be ready for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Our schoolchildren must be brought to speed through new educational syllabus and increased hours on mathematics, science and automotive intelligence studies.
This will be our investment in the next generation. We must gear up our students for innovations — new ideas, new innovation derived from palm oil, new products from rubber, new technologies which will put our country on the map as an innovative nation.
Can we come up with new products through food technologies using our pineapple, durian, mangosteen and pepper? Malaysia can move from good to great if we make some effort.
We must inspire Malaysians to be good citizens. Every citizen must be a critical component of building a great nation. All government policies must be tailored to suit the multi-ethnic, and multi-religious societal needs.
Sustainability must be the key focus driver in everything that we carry out in the name of development. People, Planet and Profit (3Ps) must be the mantra for both the public and private sectors.
Equal attention must be given to these three Ps before we can bring about balanced and sustainable development for our country.
When our development is balanced, we will become more resilient and vibrant as opposed to vulnerable.
RAVINDRAN RAMAN KUTTY
Kuala Lumpur