I FELT a sense of déjà vu reading the heading of a report “Millions vs billions, they don’t know which is bigger – M’sians call out T’ganu exco for misleading infographic” published on Jan 6.
In 2008, I conducted training for two batches of fresh graduates who were recruited by Express Rail Link to approach passengers in the satellite building at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport and convince them to take the train to the city for some sightseeing, shopping, or dining.
Passengers can do so without missing their flights as the KLIA Ekspres service is fast and reliable, and they are in control of their activities and timings.
With such predictability, it would be a wasted opportunity not to venture into the city and remain cooped up in the airport for hours.
However, the initiative fizzled out for various reasons. While young men and women, such as fresh graduates, may give good first impressions, they often lose out to those without a diploma or degree who are willing to strive harder and put more effort into their work to prove themselves.
Local graduates are afraid of making a fool of themselves when communicating in English with international travellers.
They may not speak confidently or have difficulty understanding what they hear. Also, they may not be able to rephrase and use gestures for travellers who are poor in English.
Tourism expenditure in Malaysia was about RM46 bil in 2007, but none of the recruited graduates could correctly write this amount in figures!
Earlier, when asked to guess the country’s tourism expenditure, one of them wrote a figure that was close to my declared income in 1998!
Instead of writing RM46 bil in figures starting with 46, another graduate started with 000 from the right and proceeded to the left like writing in Jawi, struggling along the way until he gave up. It would be an understatement to describe that I was shocked by the quality of our graduates.
As far back as 33 years ago in 1992, a participant with a PhD enrolled in a part-time tourist guide training course as he did not receive suitable job offers and remained unemployed.
He was a show-off and vocal, but other course participants and trainers were not impressed with him.
During that period, many working adults pursued MBA programmes, driven by the desire to add this initial behind their names.
In later years, there was a proliferation of candidates with “Dr” in front of their names, churned out by local public universities and questionable issuing bodies.
I have interviewed thousands of job applicants and recruited hundreds of staff. Although most of my recruits were graduates, not once did I bother to look at the certificate, which is just a piece of paper to me. Interviews were cut short for those who could not speak or describe well.
Academic qualifications can be dubious or useless for those who cannot interpret current issues well orally and in writing.
They may appear convincing to ordinary folk but their stories are full of holes to the knowledgeable. Also, they may not fully comprehend keywords and big figures.
According to the report mentioned earlier, the Terengganu Chairman of Agriculture, Agro-based Industry, Food Security, and State Commodities recently took to his X account to share an infographic on Terengganu’s efforts to reduce dependency on petroleum royalty proceeds.
He wrote, “What are the State Government’s efforts to reduce dependence on petroleum revenue? We drew it out so that it is easy to understand. The orange bar is the state revenue and the green bar is the amount of petroleum money over a three-year period.”
His infographic chart essentially displays a steady decrease in petroleum royalty proceeds, from RM2.21 bil a year from 2011 to 2013, to RM1.57 bil a year from 2015 to 2017, and finally, RM1.16 bil a year from 2021 to 2023.
But eagle-eyed netizens spotted something amiss about the infographic. Despite the amounts for state revenue being in the millions while the petroleum royalty proceeds being in the billions, the green bars for petroleum royalty proceeds appear to be much lower than the orange bars for state revenue.
Hence, despite the steady decrease in petroleum royalty proceeds, the green bars should still be higher than the orange bars. Malaysians took to his post to call out the infographic for being misleading.
“How is PAS governing? Even between millions and billions, they don’t know which is bigger. Someone with a ‘Dr’ standard in PAS isn’t even smart enough to look at a graph, but is persistent in wanting to talk about the economy.”
“This is clear proof that having a ‘Dr’ title doesn’t necessarily mean intelligence. Even more so, being an Exco doesn’t mean they know how to calculate. They can’t even tell the height difference of billions and millions in a graph plot”.
Although the 1MDB scandal involved tens of billions of ringgit, I have reasons to believe many of our citizens do not realise or can comprehend the scale of it all, as a million can be perceived to be more than a billion, when it is a thousand times less. – Jan 8, 2025
YS Chan is master trainer for Mesra Malaysia and Travel and Tours Enhancement Course and an Asean Tourism Master Trainer. He is also a tourism and transport business consultant.
The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Focus Malaysia.
Main image: Reuters
