Kota Kinabalu: The State Government aims to reduce the rate of hardcore poverty in the State by 70 to 80 per cent by next year, said Chief Minister Datuk Seri Hajiji Noor.
He said this will hopefully be achieved through various government initiatives.
“Firstly, the Government will provide children from hardcore poor families employment in government agencies, investing companies and government-linked companies (GLCs),” he said after the handover of participation letters of aid providing agencies to eradicate hardcore poverty, here, Thursday.
“We have asked these participating entities to ensure the hardcore poor are given job opportunities.
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Hajiji said for the non-productive ones, such as senior citizens, there are other initiatives, like capital assistance to start their businesses and cash aid.
Based on the locked figure, the number of hardcore poor in Sabah is 22,510 households (KIR), involving 101,113 household members (AIR).
Hajiji said the SMJ Secretariat, led by Datuk (Datu) Rosmadi Datu Sulai, has been tasked to coordinate the government initiatives to eradicate poverty.
The MySMJ Profiling Dashboard system was developed to store and analyse data and match assistance for the profiling of KIR and AIR based on primary data under the eKasih system.
For the pilot project here, 1,054 households were targeted. It started on Nov 15 last year and 974 families were successfully profiled. The data was recorded in the MySMJ Profiling Dashboard.
Cross-assessment was also conducted for data verification with the Social Security Organisation’s (Socso) Synergy Social Unit for aid matching.
The collected data was analysed to determine the matching intervention.
Based on the identified matching aid, 1,848 types of assistance are needed to eradicate hardcore poverty in the district – 681 employment aid, 377 home aid, 416 education aid, 112 entrepreneurship aid and 263 welfare aid.
These aids involve various government agencies, private companies and industry players.
Towards this end, 27 aid-providing agencies received participation letters, comprising 10 state ministries, nine state agencies, seven federal agencies and one industry player.
Hajiji said it would be a priority for children from hardcore poor families to be employed by agencies, companies and factories.
“Investors coming to Sabah should employ children from the e-Kasih list,” he said.
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