The government needs to be commended for providing skills-based training, especially to equip school dropouts and those unable to obtain places in tertiary centres of higher education and training.

The obvious objective is to enable trainees to get jobs or, through creativity and entrepreneurship, to set up small scale businesses enterprises as the first step towards moving on to a possible career in business.

To achieve either of these objectives, and particularly for ICT, it is absolutely imperative that they acquire at least a working knowledge of the English language.

Therefore, with respect, I would urge Umno Youth - with their intention to draw up a 'revised NEP' - to begin by looking at such grass roots issues that seriously affect Malay youth from becoming marketable.

Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the problem of getting more Malays, particularly at this level, to be interested in the study of English can be traced to the colonial period when such exposure was denied to them (this denial was even endorsed by the Sultans).

Subsequently, by switching to the Bahasa Malaysia medium (which became politically necessary) the Malaysian government failed to seriously introduce English as a second language. English is now the main language for ICT which means that the government must take responsibility for creating this digital divide.

Umno Youth has, in fact, correctly diagnosed the problem of implementation when it called for a review and evaluation of all rural and urban institutions set up by the government at the recent Umno general assembly.

May I respectfully add that any new Malay agenda should not only look to 'quick fix' ad hoc measures 'at the top' but more importantly adopt a bottom-top strategy (as has been suggested) for sustained growth and development by the practise of 'turun padang'.