project rain

This particular comment was posted by Neil in this post. To certain extent, I agree with Neil. I have been in charge of hiring for the past few years. My usual complaint is that their inability to think irregardless they are fresh or not. These people should at least watch the movie "Dead Poets Society"

On top of that, the whole education agenda is politically linked. Most policy are either racially motivated or some promises done during some election. What is going on here.

The country is in serious problem with this unemployment issue.

Someone recently muttered that facing his company's two vacancies were 3,000 applicants.

The HR ministry has been coming out with one vacuous suggestion after another:

- send the graduates back for another round of training; what for?

- make them do door-to-door sales; selling what? tongkat ali, encyclopedias, unit con-trusts?

- send them to do vocational courses; hahaha!

- define bluecollar jobs to include plantation workers; sacre bleau!

One asks - where are the factories for these vocational-retrained degree-holders when the whole of SEAsia is rapidly DE-industrialising? why train graduates to compete with vocational diploma and certificate holders who are equally affected by the factory-flights from this country? how do you change tertiary mindsets from planner to machinist after a six-month course? meanwhile, what do you do with the factory workers who've been retrenched, with the foreign workers you're reinviting in, with the midaged specialists who're now walking in shopping malls?

One also asks - why insist that 51% of jobs must go to locals when that patently will drive the last nail into the coffin of national competitiveness? The remnants of foreign-invested factories which are here because of foreign workers like indonesians, bangladeshis and burmese will take the cue to leave tomorrow rather than next month. Furthermore, just writing a policy doesn't mean the employers won't face problems getting locals to apply, especially if these be the jobs for muscles rather than brains. Isn't that a new policy that wasn't well thought out in advance?

One asks again - was the new policy to relax the requirement for housemanship and attachment of returning medical graduates if they've two years overseas experience not an act of desperation rather than brains? If your children have been denied places to do medicine locally on grounds that had nothing to do with hard-earned meritocracy, after which you have to sacrifice almost all of your life savings after much trial and tribulation for them to slog further to earn a medical degree overseas, would you then ask them to come back to serve the very government which has blocked their development at the most critical periods of their lives? Is it any wonder so many of them have moved to Singapore instead to set up practice?

In the past it was parental duty of the highest magnitude to provide tertiary education for the children. Now the parents would have discharged their duty if they ask their children NOT to return after graduation but continue to earn a masters AND get a permanent residency elsewhere.

Is it any wonder that only 250 locals returned when 200,000 were solicited? Other reasons aside, the education system was perceived to be the primary reason. Their collective conclusion - it sucks. The govt cannot possibly be so blinkered that it can still have the nerve to advance 'incentives' like tax-free cars and PRs for foreign spouses within six months. ...or CAN it?

Now we have another new policy... arabic is to be made compulsory for malay students in national schools to facilitate the study of religion. How does that jive with what the Deputy UMNO youth leader has admitted that the national schools need to be reinvented so as to have less malay-centric and islam-centric elements, that coming from the same guy and others like him who have been too quick to block chinese vernacular education because it was counter to 'the' national education policy? WHICH national education policy now?

On YET another thing, the DPM recently said there would be MODEL schools in Putrajaya. What has happened to the smart schools then, one asks to this minister who also recently said no to admission of Australia to the caucus WHEN it was already hinted by other ministers who were/are overseas that it was admissible?

Can't we all see what's happening to the govt these past months? I repeat, if the govt is (supposed) to be running the country, who's running the govt? is there right/left brain connectivity? is it running at 16kbps or 2 Mbps?

Elsewhere, sandwiched in between eco-destruction and EPF-destruction on the one hand, and state councillors being chewed up by the rakyat over the moving of some potted plants on the other hand, one asks of this new last link of the tolled road in the FT; it's called DUKE and it has been awarded to a consortium which comprises MRCB. The question is: was there an open tender in compliance with the PM's original mandate? could this 34-year concession be hiding something 'insidious'? is there transparency or just lip-service?

If my memory still serves me, Radzuan Halim had written sometime ago a marvellous piece in the Edge on toll privatisation; i wish he's around to add his admirable comments to this post.

Let me finish by going back to this thread: all three categories of business admin, IT and engineering are business-building jobs; if there are not enough jobs in these categories, it means the business-building sectors of this country have vaporised or at best stagnant. Which flies against the face of those rosy statements and figures portrayed fancifully. If they can mix up 80,000 with 18,000 with 66,000, what next won't they mix up? The data of the 9MP?

Wake Up Malaysia
More Brains Please
Care More Now
Substance Over Form
Pragmatism Over Idealism
See the !@#$# Big and Full Picture
Now