As much as I try to restrain myself from writing on the socio- politics of ‘1Bolehland’, I still fail miserably.

Apparently, everyone now is talking about the ‘brain drain’ from Bolehland because the opposition-controlled state of Penang has turned down or could not guarantee the terms of a potential multinational investor. The terms were about supplying and providing an ‘x’ number of engineers as a work force.

Okay, so we can’t guarantee an ‘x’ number of engineers but why don’t you offer them some other incentives to lure them in? I mean incentives like tax rebates or discounted utilities and power rates in exchange for the potential investor to hire and train fresh graduates.

I am sorry if I am not a qualified economist to give an opinion but I guess if even the prime minister cum finance minister can blunder on the national GDP figure, surely I can be forgiven as well.

Gerakan’s Economic Bureau head Wan Sun Keong has this to say: ‘Each year, our public and private universities produce no fewer than 6,000 engineering graduates, based on my own unofficial estimates’.

Let me ask you this. Out of this unofficial (I hope the official figure is less than this) 6,000 engineering graduates, how many posses a good command of English?

How many of them are motivated to be an engineer just for the passion and not for the pay? How many of them are willing to go the extra mile to be selected for the job?

We can’t even build a safe bridge for students to cross a river and you are talking about the mass production of engineers from local institutions. Sigh.

The ‘brain drain’ syndrome is not exclusive to Malaysia. It happens all over the world. People tend to migrate for a better life, better pay, better tax system, better education system, better growth prospects and for many more reasons some which are purely subjective.

We, however, are still busy and tied up with utter nonsense. Arresting religious preachers for ‘no license preaching’, caning female Muslims, having cheapskate racial and religious debates, a no ending mess in political parties, flip-flops and u-turns on all public policies and unimaginable corruption and idiotic personalities amongst our law-makers.

Very little attention is given to human capital, the education system, continuous education/ learning programmes, research and development and so forth.

Rejuvenate the economy, improve the education system (stimulate them to think instead of forcing them memorise), stop all this nonsense sensitivity-issues on vernacular education and ‘bahasa rasmi’ bull, get rid of race-based enrolments and improve enforcement and the judicial system to provide safer living for the citizens.

Fix the house before inviting them in.