Malaysia’s poverty rate better than UN report suggests, says Dr Mahathir
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THE poverty rate in Malaysia poverty rate is not as serious as reported by a top United Nations official, said Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad today.
However, Dr Mahathir agreed with the conclusions by UN special rapporteur Prof Philip Alston that the country’s poverty line threshold needed to be changed.
“It is not as bad as what has been said by some people who come for one day stay in big hotels and pass judgement,” said Dr Mahathir in his trademark sarcasm towards Alston and his team’s findings.
Alston had said Malaysia had vastly undercounted its poor, with the poverty level declared more relevant to the 1970s.
He said local and foreign scholars who have studied the country’s poor believe that a realistic poverty rate is between 16% and 20%.
“The government’s claim that the poverty rate is 0.4% bears no relationship to the reality on the ground,” he told reporters after the UN’s findings on poverty in Malaysia was released last week.
“The insistence that the rate is 0.4%, or about 25,000 Malaysian households, hampers the creation of effective policies targeting deprivation and poverty.
“This is a tragically low line for a country on the cusp of attaining high-income status, especially since a range of independent analysis have suggested a more realistic poverty rate of 16% to 20%, and about 9% of households survive on less than RM2,000 per month,” he had said.
When the report was unveiled last week, Dr Mahathir said the government will study it and change the poverty line if necessary.
Other PH leaders, such PKR president Anwar Ibrahim have also urged the government to look into the report’s findings and reduce the country’s widening wealth gap.
UN’s Alston had said it was critical that Malaysia review its poverty thresholds and reassess the number of its poor population in order to have policies that better target this group.
Alston added that the government must pay special attention to groups such as Orang Asli, children and migrant workers, who are especially vulnerable. – August 29, 2019.