Attitude determines altitude

 How far n how high our nation progress depends on the quality of our workforce.If we adopt the attitude of Jaguh Kampung and syiok sendiri,then we're heading to downward spiral.

It starts at the education system when mediocrity is the norm and meritocracy sidelined.our education is good enough,pass saja boleh.then our PM says resting on past glory makes us complacent and non competitive as we can't benchmark against global standards like PISA.if at high school level,our kids can't compete with the rest of Asia,don't expect miracles at university level.its too late when foundational skills and knowledge are not strong enough for advanced learning.

Then again ,many decades ago,we were good at industrialization with contract manufacturing of microchips,electrical appliances n assembly of cars.then Indonesia,Thailand n even Vietnam worked hard to beat us in these sci tech industries.

Now don't even shout about the service industries when the customer service staff can barely understand English to interact with foreign clients from the hotels to sales n marketing staff.

So when deputy trade minister lauds Malaysia's welcome to foreign investments,it comes across as a pipedream.our workforce good manufacturing practice is threatened by bad global reputation of Daihatsu stopping sales of Toyota n Perodua cars due to discovery of false safety testing records by 3rd party audit team.Peroduas reputation for good manufacturing practice is further marred in news report when a recent buyer of a brand new Perodua sedan complained the engine stalled n broke down a few hours after purchase.if we don't give consumer protection a thought,confidence n trust in our products will drop.its even worse when house buyers end up paying monthly mortgage for uncompleted houses in abandoned projects by bankrupt developers.

Now news of a door that fell off the Boeing 737 Max was manufactured in Malaysia.

Japanese products couldn't compete with western manufactured products until they adopted quality control circles and continuous improvement standards until Japanese cars were in demand globally.China too was associated with low quality products in the early years until sci tech R n D put them at the top of consumers choice from smartphones,solar panels n electrical vehicles.

Now Proton has revived profitability after tie up with China's Geely automobiles.previously it was good reputation when tied up with japanese Mitsubishi,then slowly quality issues in tie up with French Proton Tiara,British Lotus and now revived it's fortune in tie up with China.China generously offered Technical training to our workers in TVET schemes so if we don't buck up our education in STEM and digital know how,we will be left behind nation in Asean in biotech,electronics and digital economy.