Malaysians and the cry for a decent salary

The Sun carried an interesting article on their front page today. It was about a Malaysian born, world authority in keyhole surgery in children, paediatric surgeon, Prof. Dr. Tan Hock Lim and his "so called" eyebrow raising salary of RM 168,000 a month!! (USD 52,000)

In other articles recently, we Malaysians lamented that the minimum wage should be raised to RM 1,500 from the current RM 600-700 range.

So...are our salaries too high or too low????

I work in the Oil & Gas industry and find an amusing yet prevailing Malaysian mindset in our senior management that prevents them from paying capable Malaysians a decent wage.

We seem to be willing to pay consultants, expatriates, foreign contractors, etc. millions of dollars but find it sooooooo difficult when it come to our own local talent.

I have expats working with me, getting paid USD 1,200 per day as project managers. (USD 36,000 a month)

So back to Prof. Dr. Tan.......

How much do we expect to pay a " Malaysian born, world authority in keyhole surgery in children" la???? RM 10,000......RM 20,000.......PLEEEASE LA........

I received similar responses when I came home to work from working abroad for over 10 years. "Wah...we cannot match your USD salary la....." was the standard response.

When are we gonna understand that we have good Malaysian workers who would love to be back working in Malaysia??? Actually....we do..........but they work for Shell or some other multinationals!!!

Another good example was my cousin, who is Malaysian, and was recently made an offer to return to Malaysia (He's currently based in Dubai) and work for the national airline. Salary in RM. (Pretty low)
He insisted that since he has been trained overseas and has been working with international airlines all over the world, he should be paid international standard USD wages.
Their response was the killer............"You give up your Malaysian passport la....get another country passport and then we can pay you the expat salary package!!!!!"

So the bottom line is.......FOR THE SAME JOB IN MALAYSIA, AN EXPAT WILL BE BETTER PAID!!!! .......Sick isn't it???

And this is after 50 years of independence!!!

Prof. Dr. Tan should just get an "Aussie" passport!!! Hell...any "Mat Salleh" passport!!