In a response to Tun Mahathir’s recent decision to welcome more skilled foreigners especially in the IT sector and offering them Malaysian citizenship, SUPP Wanita Chief, Kho Teck Wan insists that the Government must always consider Malaysians first.

Kho said she wants to send a strong message to the Federal Government to first “look within” and not get carried away with the “look east” and “look outside” policies. The local IT industry and ecosystem cannot grow and sustain, if the Government cannot nurture and recognise the IT talents from within the country. There are so many young IT talents in Malaysia, especially in the application development sectors. There is a need to create the IT ecosystems and support the entrepreneurial spirit.

Kho, who herself was an IT professional in the United States before returning to Malaysia under the Talent Corp Program, cautions that Malaysia must curb brain-drain effectively and not to become over-reliant on “foreign imports”.  She added, rather than enticing foreigners with citizenship and large pay packages over our own talent, it is more important to ensure that the knowledge transfer is done by foreign skilled to Malaysia IT professionals. It is also time to let our locals assume greater responsibilities, as many of our local talent are just as qualified.”

Kho also wishes to highlight, that it is important for our Government who is also the single largest user and buyer of IT products in the country, to be a champion of local IT talent and products; and to always prioritise the support for our home-grown over the foreign substitutes. These are essential to develop the local IT industry and in turn, produce more employment and retain talent in Malaysia.

Moving forward, we will also put forward our suggestions for the Federal Government to have proper policies to be in place to ensure the IT firms that want to hire foreign professionals must prove that they have tried to hire Malaysians first.

In the long run, as our Universities have been moving up the world ranking, there is no excuse for us not able to grow our talent locally to fill the shortages. Furthermore, the government must closely manage the job market to avoid too much competition for jobs which will only leave young Malaysian graduates overlooked.