TALENT CORPORATION : WITH ALL DUE RESPECT BUT...

...will it really meet its noble objective of luring back the best brains of Malaysia to their home country? I still have reservations about this.

Yes, our PM's intention is good but for as long as I can remember, I never thought highly of Malaysians who choose to work and reside abroad. Because majority of these people, while having succeeded in making a living in Sydney, London or New York, usually also ridicule their home country - my country mind you, as being the reason why they left in the first place for the so-called greener pastures.

Okay fair enough. You claim that Malaysia is not able to offer you employment or the salary band you so desire. But for the sake of argument, why can your other fellow Malaysians still make a decent living here in good old Jalur Gemilang land? This issue is so subjective, no party - whether the Malaysians abroad or the Malaysians here, would want to take a step back and re-evaluate their stand. But I for one, as someone who is a product of the national education system - from primary to tertiary and now working for a respectable Malaysian company, would insist that serving your nation is allegiance of the highest order. Period.

The worst kind of Malaysians are the ones who studied abroad on Malaysian government scholarship, be it JPA, MARA or PETRONAS, to name a few. Once they graduated, they secure employment in the country where they studied and cancel out the scholarship bond by repaying their sponsors. There is even a greater number of Malaysian students who simply dissapear and that's when you see the long list of defaulters advertised by their sponsors on the back pages of Sunday papers. The ones biting the dust would of course be their guarantors who were suckered to sign on the dotted lines prior to these ungrateful lots' departure overseas several years back.

And then of course there's the other kind who slog it out from scratch, saving every penny or dime to achieve their dreams of the promised land. The kind depicted in immigration-theme movies like Crossing Over and Bordertown. As a result of this, Malaysians travelling to Britain in the future, for example, may be slapped with a visa ruling, something which we have enjoyed being exempted from by our colonial masters, due to Malaysians of these kinds overstaying on social visit pass in various parts of the kingdom.

What else? Aah, yes. Malaysians with dual citizenship when our laws clearly prohibits that. Malaysians who give birth to their child abroad but still come back to KL to register their birth certificate and then return back to Toronto where their child's Canadian birth certificate also awaits. Malaysians who prolong their stay in, oh I don't know, Philadelphia, years after they graduated until they are forced to come home when their mom is dying in Temerloh and on and on and on.

My point is - kalau dah memang tak nak balik tu, tak de nya dia orang nak balik. Sebab hati dah terpaut pada flat di Notting Hill, London atau townhouse di San Francisco atau apartment di Lower East Side Manhattan, New York.

I wish the Malaysian Government all the best with this newly-established Talent Corporation.
But again, with all due respect, lebih baik lah naik kan gaji kami yang memang setia berkhidmat di tanahair ni...