The Malaysian Insight

WOMEN, Family and Community Development Minister Rina Harun refused to be pinned down today on the question of whether volunteers at the National Welfare Foundation, who received a monthly stipend, were members of her party Bersatu.

Pressed to answer how many of the volunteers were members of the party’s women’s wing, she repeated her statement that one did not have to be a Bersatu member to volunteer at the foundation.

“The ministry has about 8,000 people while the Welfare Department has only about 6,000. Malaysia has a population of 32 million,” she said in Kg Datuk Keramat at a programme to hand out aid to flood victims.

“We can’t do much with the manpower we have ,which is why we are grateful to have the volunteers.”

The minister had sidestepped similar questions from Segambut MP Hannah Yeoh last week in parliament.

Yeoh, who is the former deputy women, family and community minister, had asked whether the volunteers were paid RM1,000 a month for 3 months. She also asked if Rina’s party colleagues had been put on the government payroll as volunteers.

Rina had said that it was not part of the recruitment process to ask volunteers for their background. She said the job was open to all even though the foundation had accepted only 30 people as volunteers.

Rina did not address Yeoh’s allegation that most of the volunteers were Bersatu members. – December 12, 2020.