Extraordinary policies needed to overcome pandemic challenges - Jeffrey Cheah

The founder and chairman of Sunway Group said with the people at the tipping point, grappling with many hardships, there is a need to put out extraordinary things, especially to encourage the business people to invest, reinvest and boost businesses.

"We are already in a sad situation, with losses by the millions, difficulty to bring food to the table, the best thing for us now is to come out with extraordinary initiatives, policies and budgets to be different from the old ways by taking into consideration the suffering of the Malaysian people," he said during a virtual programme named Conversation organised by MIDF.

During the interview by MIDF group managing director Datuk Charon Wardini Mokhzani, Cheah said the country also needs to have a policy, besides bringing back business, confidence and trust in the government and the institutions, while able to unite people to bring prosperity into the systems.

Citing the Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) programme as a very demotivating policy, Cheah said this needed to be relooked.

The MM2H programme has been well received since its inception in 2002, offering a renewable 10-year multiple-entry visa, which has attracted applicants mainly from Asian countries such as China, Japan and South Korea and it was reported to have generated RM40.6 billion from 21,841 approved applications from 2002 to 2018.

The MM2H programme had recently made a comeback, with stricter conditions to attract only applicants who can contribute to the country's economy.

Commenting further on this, Cheah said the new condition has added more hurdles to the MM2H initiative instead of giving incentives.

"We invited people to invest in a home here and we cannot suddenly kick them out when they had brought in billions to live here and brought in tourists as low hanging fruits that generated a lot of cash in the tourism industry.

"Why suddenly change the goal post?" he asked.

Moving forward, he said people in charge have to really think of how not to affect ordinary people with bad policies.

However, he lauded the government's digitalisation initiatives as timely as problems could no longer be solved with the analogue mindset but with the need to embrace the digital age.

"As last words to young people who aspire to be successful in their endeavours, they must have the right values as it is often said that 'character is destiny and character is shaped by our values'. Through good values and hard work, destiny is shaped and there should be no shortcuts.

"Integrity should not be compromised and we need to stay humble and adopt humility as core values, and strive for excellence," he added.