Saturday, July 4, 2009

All for Bio-Malaysia

1. Years ago I was invited to a national conference on Bio-Malaysia in Putrajaya. It was an excellent effort and initiative taken by then then government to address biodiversity for biotechnology. After all Pak Lah, our beloved Prime Minister believed that biotechnology could be our next engine of socio-economic growth, when launching the National Biotechnology Policy in 2005.

2. About the same year, when I met YBhg Dato' Dr. Abdullah Che Wan, famed for leading Badminton Association of Malaysia for many years is currently the Chairman of BioPerak. BioPerak was established the similar efforts for Perak. Many start-up companies were established to address the same.

3. The then Prime Minister, Pak Lah when chairing the National Biodiversity & Biotechnology Council, had expressed his views in support of the state level organisations or companies to utilise the rich and diverse biodiversity for biotechnology.

4. Then I heard there were rumours of the establishment of BioPerlis, BioPahang, BioKelantan etc. How true this rumous is I'm not in the position to tell. But I can tell you Sarawak and Sabah are serious with this as they had already established, Sarawak Biodiversity Centre and Sabah Biodiversity Centre, respectively.

5. Mext week I'm invited by BioJohor to a state level conference to revisit the similar issue. I'm not sure whether I am able to attend and deliver my thoughts as yet, as the semester has already began. I'm supposed to teach ethnobotany, biodiversity to first years students; taxonomy to 2nd year students and Biodiversity & Systtematics to post-graduate students.

2 comments:

Ahmed Razman said...

BioKelantan should be the first and foremost the leading biodiversity centre. After all I believe most of its biodiversity experts came from this state.

Get those Kelantanese born millionaire to be involved in this project as well, like Tan Sri Wan Azmi, Dato' Nadzmi Salleh and so on. 1 million ringgit is a small change for them but a massive favour to this centre.

Or if they insist on some sort of returns for their investment (they are businessman after all), ask them to set up biotechnology companies to commercially marketing the bio products, but of course within its sustainability programs.

It's a win win situation for both parties.

pakteh said...

My son speaks like an economist