By Ida Nadirah Ibrahim
SHAH ALAM, Sept 7 — Malaysia, particularly Selangor, has to focus on producing quality talent pool to be able to compete globally.
Founder and group chief executive officer of Aerodyne Group, Kamarul A, said this should be one of the medium-to-long term solutions in new wealth creation for the country, especially in adaption to the new digital economy.
He said Malaysia should also shift from being a traditionally technology-consuming country to become a technology-producing nation.
“The economy today is slowly being replaced with the new digital economy… we need to start focusing on changing from being a techonology consuming nation into a tech-producing nation.
“What do we need? Talent. But having talent alone is still not enough. We need quality talent that would enable us to compete globally. If we want to be global tech producer we need global class talents. This remain as one of the biggest challenges,” he said during the wealth creation syndicate at the 2021 Selangor Budget 2021 Dialogue, held at the Setia City Convention Centre, here today.
Kamarul said sufficient funding is required for such initiative and the support from the local entrepreneurs is crucial even if the local technology is not at par with other countries, adding that said Selangor had already initiated several programmes to push forward entrepreneurs.
“So what if the technology is 20 per cent inferior to what you get if you were to import it? Let it be, support the local companies so they can grow and with the investments, they can compete on a global scale,” he said.
Commenting on short-term and immediate wealth creation, Kamarul said Selangor could focus on improving and increasing efficiency.
He said this could be carried out using the readily available technologies, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and the next level of digital transformation.
“This is the part where we have no shortage of capabilities… we can look into improving from the way we manage state, the way we do monitoring of state asset, the way we get the full value of state assets, not just through communication but also using technology to allow us to improve this efficiency,” he noted.
Kamarul cited the water crisis as an example in which the state government can utilise the use of robotics, such as drones, to conduct constant surveillance, which he said would be more cost-efficient.
“When we do this, the cost is lower than using the traditional method. This will displace some jobs but we can repurpose and retrain the talent.
“Technology can not only improve in this area, but we can retrain this talent so they can fill the requirement of jobs in the future,” he added.
The one-day Selangor 2021 Budget Dialogue, which serves to gather input from the grassroots and industry players of the state ahead of the state’s budget announcement, covered five syndicates — agricultural, tourism and agro-tourism, public health and livable city, microentrepreneurs, digitalisation and urban poverty, wealth creation, and creative industry.
