Nurture local talents to become global talents, says who?

When I heard this over the news I thought it was someone quoting the old guards. The newsreader said this was Lim Swee Say’s call. To me it was a wake up call, a wake up call in the sense that a minister has woken up to realize that it is important to nurture our local talents to compete internationally, to become global talents. Have we been doing this? There have been so many news and complaints that the govt has been spending billions to nurture foreign talents and telling our local talents to fend for themselves, got money go overseas to get the degree of their choice. No money ask papa and mama to sell homes to finance them, and all ended up in debt.

And to take it one step further, the govt has been blowing their trumpets about how many foreign talents they have attracted to our shores to replace our degenerating local genes. Just open your eyes and cannot miss the foreign talents everywhere, in GLCs, in ministries and in Parliament.

What would happen to our local talents if this process continues unabated? What would happen if no minister is going to speak out about nurturing our local talents? Or what would happen now that Lim Swee Say is saying it? Would it matter, would it make any difference? Would the no need to grow our own timber policy continues?

Take a step back to some 30 years ago when the policies of the old guards were still in place, that was, to nurture our own local talents. If that policy was not in place then, ministers like Lim Swee Say and many other ministers, our CEOs in the GLCs, permament secretaries, deputy secretaries, generals, commissioners, judges etc etc, would they be where they are today? Or would their places be filled by foreigners and they be like the PMETs of today, being replaced prematurely by clever foreigners and have to be retrained to be cleaners or security guards? Or would they be self employed, be their own bosses as taxi drivers?

How many of our ministers and natural aristocrats benefited from the old guards’ policy of growing our own timber, nurturing our own talents to be our own leaders and head honchos? Why would those who benefited from the nurturing own talents policy turned around to say, better to nurture other people’s talents and fill our top positions with foreign talents? Why are they so ungrateful, that after crossing the bridge they cut the bridge, to say our local talents no good, no need to nurture them?

Is Lim Swee Say the proverbial one swallow in winter, or was he making a politically correct statement and with no intent to follow up? Would there be other ministers coming to say the same thing and then come up with policies to nurture our own talents for real?

Just wait and see.