The moment when dream is awakened
mysinchew, 02/12/2009I wonder if you feel the same as me, all of the sudden, I realized friends and relatives around me seem to get lesser by the day.
Those years when the New Year drew near, all sorts of gathering appointments almost completely filled the diaries, but this year it seems so quiet.
Even in normal time, phone calls become less and less, face to face meet up also become much less.
Perhaps, everybody is busy with their own things, or perhaps, nowadays people prefer to stay in.
However, it is not entirely like this, thinking further, actually old friends and relatives are not around any more. God bless, they are still alive and well, they just left the country, Malaysia.
They have gone to China to set factory; Ah Wang quit his engineer job and migrated to Australia to set up his little food store business, Ah Fong left the local University went to Hong Kong as a lecturer. 'Frog' went to Taiwan to pursue his second career life. Others went to Americia, England, even Indonesia...
At first, I thought these are individual cases, but gradually, people around me realized the same, these are not individual cases but a general symptoms of our society. they are not small numbers but the pretty big indeed.
Department of Foreign Affairs released the figures earlier, it confirmed the situation is real.
From March 2008 through September 2009, a total of 300,000 Malaysian migrated to other countries, among them 200,000 left between Jan - Aug 2009. (in 8 months)
Cumulatively, there are 2 million Malaysian migrated, this figure is close to the number of Indonesian workers in Malaysia today.
The difference are, those migrated are mostly professional and middle class people.
They have many reasons to leave: pursue career development, for the future of
their children, in search of better life and environment...
In one sentence, they lost hope of Malaysia.
50 years ago people said: Malaysia is very good, better than Hong Kong and even Japan.
30 years ago people said: Malaysia is not bad, comparable to S.. Korea and Taiwan. (No mention of Hong Kong and Japan any more).
20 years ago people said: Malaysia can do lah, at least better than China and Thailand (Cannot compare with Taiwan and Korea lah)
10 years ago poeple said: No matter how bad Malaysia is, cannot be worse than Vietnam and Indonesia (China is already in a different category).
Today, the economic growth rate of Vietnam and Indonesia already far exceeded Malaysia. Social activity and intellectual development of the country is also better, the gap between us and them is closing up.
Why worry? there are still Philipines, Cambodia and Myanmar behind us.
However, according to an economist who recently surveyed Phillipines, he thinks in 20 years' time, Malaysia can replace Phillipines to become the World exporter of Malaysian maids.
Over half the century, Malaysians live in the big old imperial housing complex, closed up and survive on properties left behind by the ancestor; continue to consume up social resources, wasteful, and drive away talents; they never talk about competitiveness, totally neglect productivity and hate meritocracy.
When Asia economic storm hit in 1997, Malaysia closed their doors, thinking we beautifully avoided a disaster, they even think of themselves as genius being able to handle the situation so well.
However, just look at other countries in our neighbourhood, they stand up, face the storm, and walk out of the storm. They overhauled the system, improve the processes and march forward, they moved up to a new level. And Malaysia, still walking on the same spot.
Dear Malaysia, it's time to wake up! We are very very late now !
For original article, please see link below: http://opinions.sinchew-i.com/
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