Professor Dr Farida Shah, formerly professor of molecular biology at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). was for three years the CEO of the Melaka Biotech Corporation, an initiative set up by the state government to build its own biotech industry.
She set up the Melaka Institute of Biotechnology (MIB), which is the first state-owned biotech Institute. The MIB is based on the Karolinska Institute of Sweden where science and business are under one set-up. Our focus is agro-biotechnology, herbal and medicinal plants and pharmacogenomics.
Melaka Biotech Holdings Sdn Bhd (MBH) aims to make the state a growth catalyst for biotechnology.
Lastly, the Melaka Biotechnology Corporation was incorporated and formalised in 2005 with the two entities under its umbrella.
"I set up a committee to develop a biotechnology course for diploma holders at Kolej Teknologi Islam Antarabangsa in Melaka, which will hopefully be the feeder for biotech students in other universities." She said in an interview with The Edge shortly before she resigned.
Melaka are in the process of setting up five companies, two spin-offs from MIB and In Vitro Tech Sdn Bhd, involving plant tissue culture production, and TBE Sdn Bhd (essential oils and herbal extracts) with cooperation from Mara. We signed an agreement with DNAPRo for the production of vaccines, using technology from Cuba, and Healol Malaysia for the production of nutraceuticals. When everything is in place, these companies will be parked in Masjid Tanah Industrial Park.
Bureaucracy,red tape and no communication between state and federal government
In an interview with The Edge. she said "I was not popular with some state government officials because biotech cannot wait for slow government bureaucracy and red tape but fortunately, the chief minister intervened and pushed biotech. " She add "We have had no communication from Malaysian Biotechnology Corp and Malaysian Technology Development Corporation regarding how state initiatives can be beneficiaries of programmes and activities at the federal level."
"the state lacks funds for full biotech development and gets no support from the federal government. We have been working on a very, very small budget."
Graduates not "job ready"
"Most of the graduates we interviewed lacked hands-on experience in spite of the fact that they were supposed to have done a project in their final year. Most were not "job ready". "
Difficulties to competete with Singapore
"Of course, it's difficult to get graduates with MSc or PhD because the salaries are not in line with their qualifications, so most of them prefer to work in Singapore where salaries are higher and scientific working conditions are better. " She add.
Prior to that, in September, 2005. She told The Edge that "Every year, I see some of my students, who are good research candidates, go down to Singapore,” “My ex-colleagues at UKM face this problem as well. We are subsidising Singapore’s human resources.” Even after she has moved on to manage MBH, the spectre of Singapore continues to haunt her. “I wanted to employ these two researchers who came back from the United States,” she says, “but in the end they accepted a better offer from Singapore.” She says the lack of a proper career path for research scientists is hurting the nation. “The government should do a comprehensive survey of where are our students today.
How many of them go into sales and how many go to Singapore or other countries like the US and the UK.” She suggests Malaysia (in September 2005) take a look at what France is doing. “They employ good local researchers and attache them to various research institutes in the country.” The French Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) is reportedly the world’s largest research body, employing 26,000 staff and 11,600 researchers in 1,300 laboratories.
What groundwork and policies need to be in place
Dr Farida view that We also need to address how the country will benefit in the long run from sustainable development, capacity building, production of knowledge workers, increasing the ratio of scientists per million population, building our own innovations and intellectual property, and so on, which is what real biotechnology development is all about.
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