By Asmahanim Amir
Pix Ikhwan Hashim

PUTRAJAYA, 11 June 2015 – Malaysia needs to empower science, technology and innovation (STI) for social economic growth by intensifying creativity and innovation along with strengthening market driven research and development, sourcing and diffusing new technology.

Secretary General of The Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI), Dato’ Sri Dr Noorul Ainur Mohd Nur said the country also should develop and attract talent, deepen awareness on STI and strengthen collaboration between  partners.

Dr Noorul Ainur said MOSTI is not alone in promoting social inclusion in public policy because others ministries and government agencies in Malaysia have been implementing cross-cutting social inclusion policies with the cooperation of the academia, industry and the public.

“Actually, all ministries and agencies involve the people. When people are involved, indirectly it becomes social inclusion. This is where social policy actually overlaps  issues in all ministries or agencies because we provide public services.

“In Malaysia, we have many social policies, including in the ministries and agencies, but the question is whether the results of each social policy at that time is relevant or not for conclusion assessment or monitoring,” she stated.

She said if the social policy not relevant at that time, the ministries or agencies need to change and must have another observation on the policy.

“It means that we need to change to adapt to the present situation. That is the first. Secondly,  when we talk about social policy, for example policy for eradicating poverty, we must ensure the policy is not a ‘one size fits all’ approach. It means that the policy in Sabah is different with states in  peninsular Malaysia,” she added.

Dato’ Sri Dr Noorul Ainur was speaking to reporters after the launch of the project Promoting Social Inclusion Through Public Policies in Malaysia and Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) Signing Ceremony Between Institute of Malaysian and International Studies (IKMAS), The National University of Malaysia (UKM) and UNESCO here on June 8th.

Also present were UKM Vice-Chancellor Prof Dato’ Dr Noor Azlan Ghazali, Head of Social Human Sciences UNESCO Jakarta Office, Irakli Khodeli and Director of IKMAS, Prof Dr Rashila Ramli.

Meanwhile, Prof Noor Azlan said social inclusion is not about welfare, but it  encompasses every aspect of the economy, society and sciences.

“So inclusion has been practised at all areas here and I believe in having cross-disciplinary expertise here, so we look into the perspective of social inclusion,” he said.

Prof Dr Rashila said the MOA is to observe the UNESCO framework for social inclusion, where there are many perimeters.

“We will see to what level it is adaptable for our situation and at the same time we were allowed to  give our own input and InsyaAllah by the end of the year when we have very good results in our sub group discussion, we will share them with the stakeholders.

“So stakeholders including ministries and NGOS (non-government organisations) would be looking for cross-disciplinary inputs. Not only UKM, but also partnerships with other universities,” she explained.

She said UKM and UNESCO have become national partners.

“We look into expertise with the respect to developing framework itself for the analysis and then we work on the equi frame which is the model that can be used  but even that when we go through the workshop we will have different sub-groups.

“From there we will see whether it suits our own context or not. So this is the kind of things that will be available towards the end of the project,” she added.