KUALA LUMPUR — Poverty in the country continues to persist and requires policy attention, Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has said, despite the strides that have been made to tackle the problem.

Speaking at a forum about the eradication of poverty in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday (Oct 16), Dr Mahathir said that Malaysia is no longer just grappling with rural poverty but also urban poverty.

“While rural poverty still continues to be critical, urban poverty needs policy attention and prescriptions. Persistent pockets of poverty (also) continue to elude policy solutions in Malaysia,” said Dr Mahathir.

He added that close attention has to be given to income and wealth distributions, as progress towards reducing poverty will be stunted unless improvements in income and wealth distribution occur alongside poverty reduction, news agency Bernama reported.

Noting that “economic growth per se does not equate to development for all”, Dr Mahathir said that a country is not developed if some of its population have to struggle on a daily basis to make a living and their children are facing malnutrition.

“A country cannot consider itself developed if some segments of its society do not have access to basic amenities, do not have jobs that can give them sufficient incomes or are unemployed, and have little access to productive assets,” said Dr Mahathir.

MALAYSIA’S NATIONAL POVERTY RATE

Malaysia’s official government data states that 0.4 per cent of households live under the poverty line, but the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Professor Philip Alston, has disputed this.

“Malaysia’s national poverty line is not consistent with the cost of living or household income. It might have made sense in 1970, but real household income has increased fivefold since then, and the country has gone from a ‘low-income’ to an ‘upper middle income’ country in that time,” Prof Alston said in a report in August.

“The national poverty line of RM980 per household of four people surviving on RM8 per day is not realistic.

“This is a tragically low line for a country on the cusp of attaining high income status, especially since a range of rigorous independent analyses have suggested a more realistic poverty rate of 16 to 20 per cent and about 9 per cent of households survive on less than RM2,000 per month.”

Malaysia’s economic affairs minister Azmin Ali subsequently dismissed this, saying that the country stood by its official poverty figure of 0.4 per cent as it was derived from internationally-accepted standards based on a 2011 UN handbook.

Wading into the discussion, Malaysia’s prime minister-in-waiting, Mr Anwar Ibrahim, in September urged the government to recognise the policy failures of the country’s Economic Planning Unit, which is overseen by Mr Azmin’s ministry.

Mr Anwar had said that he found it difficult to believe the government’s official poverty figures, as the reality on the ground is far different.

“In any village in Port Dickson, you can go to a Malay kampung, Indian estate, Chinese fishing village, Orang Asli settlement, all of them register much greater figures of poverty.

“So what Prof Alston has done, notwithstanding some misgivings, is not shocking to me. But it would be shocking to those who have clear disconnect,” said Mr Anwar, who is the Member of Parliament for Port Dickson.

On Tuesday (Oct 15), Mr Anwar was seen for the first time with Mr Azmin since the heated Parti Keadilan Rakyat polls last November, chatting at the Parliament lounge for about 30 minutes during lunch break. 

Mr Azmin said that his meeting with Mr Anwar centred around how they could work together to address economic issues.

“We discussed measures to tackle poverty and also other matters on how we can work together to ensure the success of the nation’s economic direction,” Mr Azmin told The Star. AGENCIES