“I think Asean is good at organising a lot of high-profile meetings, but in terms of implementation, we have all these gaps that can’t be covered,” he said when commenting on an Asean youth mobility study.
Ong, who served as deputy international trade and industry minister from 2018 to 2020, said the bloc does not have a budget that is on par with the European Union.
Asean also lacks the same level of institutional strength and jurisdictional authority.
“Money speaks louder than words. If we had a larger pool of funds, these (youth mobility) programmes would have a higher degree of success,” he said.
Ong said that from a talent recruitment and development standpoint, some Asean countries, notably Singapore, were far ahead of others.
He suggested that initiatives, such as Singapore’s Asean scholarship, be established as an institutional norm across the bloc, eventually scaling up into region-wide mobility schemes for young talents.
He said that while Malaysia has seen increased opportunities for students to build their talents through programmes such as competitions on public policy and economics, these platforms are mainly available to students of private universities and high-income families.
“From my observation, most of these competitions are actually hosted in private universities, rather than public universities. Students (who enter these competitions) will do well (in terms of global competitiveness),” he said.
Ong lamented that a majority of the students who took part in these competitions are mostly from the Klang Valley, from middle or upper-income households.
“Many of them can be categorised into this elite ecosystem. So we need to address this challenge and make these ecosystems more inclusive,” he said.
Melati Nungsari, a researcher with the Asia School of Business, said studies on youth mobility across Asean have faced a lot of pushback due to worries regarding the loss of local talents.
“Everybody’s afraid of the ‘brain drain’ but let’s not restrict our young talents.
“Malaysia is actually an attractive place, with quite a lot to offer. We can see a lot of benefits from both sending people overseas and receiving new talents in return,” she said.
She said Malaysia should look at youth mobility in terms of building the capacity of its people instead. “Build a Malaysia that people want to come back to.”
The Asean Youth Compendium study, developed by TalentCorp in conjunction with the Asia School of Business, highlights key challenges and opportunities in youth labour mobility.
According to the study, with over half of Asean’s population being under 35, the research is crucial in introducing policy recommendations to streamline regional mobility.