COMMENT | The brain drain issue in Malaysia recently hit the headlines when the former dean of Universiti Malaya’s medical faculty, Dr Adeeba Kamarulzaman, tweeted that the university loses 30 of its best and brightest medical graduates to Singapore annually.

This tweet, and the news articles which reported it, provoked a number of public reactions. One such reaction was an opinion piece that was widely shared asking for Talentcorp to be shut down due to its inability to stem the brain drain problem.

I brought up the issue of Malaysians giving up their citizenship back in 2016 when I was the member of Parliament for Serdang. But rather than putting all of the blame of Talentcorp, we should instead empower Talentcorp so that it can achieve better results moving forward. Shutting down Talentcorp is akin to throwing out the baby with the bathwater and ignores the productive work this agency has done since its creation in 2011.

Talentcorp’s purview

Before we discuss how Talentcorp can be empowered, it is necessary to point out what Talentcorp is not responsible for.

Firstly...