PETALING JAYA: Malaysia’s education system needs a massive overhaul, said prominent entrepreneur Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah.
The founder of the Sunway Group, in an open letter in conjunction with the 65th National Day, said unless this challenge is addressed urgently, “we will doom our children and our country to a future of poverty and misery”.
“In a globalised world, the competition our children face will come not just from the student at the next desk, but from far beyond our borders,” he said.
Cheah also expressed concern over the decline in the command of English among Malaysians, when English is the language of trade and commerce and Malaysia is a trading nation.
He said a lack of fluency in English may pose a major hurdle in efforts to build a prosperous Malaysia while the more languages Malaysians are fluent in, the more opportunities they can explore in a globalised world.
Cheah also expressed alarm about corruption, which has reached an endemic level in the country and “unless we seriously root out corruption, we are in trouble”.
He cautioned that allowing corruption to go unchecked is like injecting poison into a body and just as how cancer attacks a body from within, corruption is a disease that can destroy a country and society from the inside out.
However, he welcomed the recent decisions by the courts on corruption cases while describing the judiciary’s upholding of its institutional integrity as a huge step forward in the war against corruption.
On the bright side, Cheah spoke of a historic memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaacob and the Pakatan Harapan coalition, which is beginning to bear fruit in terms of reforming the country’s political system.
“The anti-hopping law has been gazetted. A political financing Bill will soon be tabled. Parliament is growing in independence as it plays its check-and-balance role.
“But even more crucial is the out-of-the-box thinking that led to the MoU and introduced the concept of ‘compete and collaborate’ into our political system. It provides a sense of stability that greatly helps the governance of the country. We need more such ideas to move forward.”
On the cost of living, Cheah said the government did well to cushion the harshest impact of rising costs for Malaysians, especially those in the B40 category. However, it has come at a huge and unsustainable cost of almost RM80 billion for subsidies.
Although these stop-gap measures have provided temporary aid, what the country needs is a set of cohesive, coherent and coordinated long-term policies that can raise productivity levels and the people’s income.
