MALAYSIA NEED HIGHLY QUALIFIED SCIENTISTS, PROFESSIONALS - MINISTER

KUCHING (Malaysia), Nov 4 (Bernama) -- Malaysia are in dire need of highly qualified scientists and other professionals to propel the country's knowledge-based economy (KBE).

Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation Dr Maximus Ongkili said in
2002 Malaysia had only 18 research scientists and engineers (RSEs) for every
10,000 workforce.

"This is much too low compared with our target ratio of 50 RSEs for every
10,000 workforce by 2010. It is also low compared with number of RSEs in
developed countries," said Dr Maximus in his speech read out by his deputy
Fadillah Yusof at the welcoming dinner of the 56th ASEAN Committee on Science
and Technology (COST) meeting here Monday.

While our long-term strategy to overcome the deficiency would be to upgrade
some universities to research universities to train a bigger number of
post-graduate students, the short-term measure would be to attract foreign
scientists and engineers to conduct their research work in Malaysia, he
said.

He added that another initiative would be to tighten gaps in the research
and development (R&D) capacity and capability since Malaysian universities and
research institutions lack frontier research.

"The way to address this constraint will be to leverage on knowledge and
expertise that are available worldwide from developed as well as developing
countries," he said.

He said amidst pressing concerns in the region such as natural disaster,
food shortage, climate change and alternative energy source, there are also
other dimensions, political and economical, that will surely obstruct the
ability of developing countries to advance in science and technology, thus
widening the gap between knowledge-rich countries and knowledge-poor countries.

However, he said, such predicaments should not be allowed to dampen the
country's goal to harness scientific and technological advancements to enhance
social well-being.
--BERNAMA