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WARISAN president Datuk Seri Mohd Shafie Apdal said the Sabah government relied on flawed data and temporary fixes to deal with the issue of hardcore poverty in the state.
The state opposition leader, commenting on the state’s surprising announcement on Tuesday that it had eradicated hardcore poverty, said the prevalence of poverty in the state was unique and that it required a realistic approach to deal with the problem effectively.
“Even to this day, eight out of the 10 poorest districts in Malaysia are in Sabah, with many families earning income that falls below the poverty line,” he said in a statement in Kota Kinabalu, today.
“Furthermore, what defines families as hardcore poor in Sabah must be different from their counterparts in Peninsular Malaysia because those living in extreme poverty in the state have seasonal income earned from farming and fishing.
“In contrast, the hardcore in the peninsula come from low-income or unemployed groups.”
The Semporna MP said Sabah had the highest number of jobless people in the country, highlighting the prevalence of individuals without any source of income.
He said the indicators used by the state – such as having a low level of education, being unemployed, and earning below RM1,218 – in classifying hardcore poor households were too broad.
Shafie also said it was inaccurate to lump families into one household when collating data on the hardcore poor as it was common for several families to live under one roof due to financial hardship.
He added that cash aid and monthly public assistance were not sustainable and further perpetuated dependency without resolving the problem.
He also urged the authorities to conduct on-ground assessments to better understand the reality of poverty in Sabah.
Sabah chief minister Datuk Seri Hajiji Noor on Tuesday said the hardcore poverty of 22,510 households had been eradicated.
But a statement from SMJ Secretariat, the agency-in-charge of addressing the problem, said there were more than 4,000 households in the e-Kasih database whose poverty issues remained unresolved.
The e-Kasih database is a national poverty data bank in Malaysia, established under the Economic Planning Unit to identify and assist low-income households.
It serves as a centralised platform that consolidates information on families living below the poverty line, enabling government agencies to coordinate and implement targeted poverty alleviation programmes. – August 16, 2024.