Poor gets poorer in Sabah with price hikes

By Luke Rintod

KOTA KINABALU: In Malaysia's capital city Kuala Lumpur where salaries are higher, a 55% increase in white sugar price may dent the pocket but in Sabah's vastly rural interior it could mean having to go without.

That is the direct impact of Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak's recent price hike on fuel and sugar. The price increases will plunge the poorest state in Malaysia into further abyss.

For the 40% of Malaysia's poorest people who are centred in Sabah, small 'luxuries' such as sugar, oil and milk or a hot meal in the local coffee shop is now not a matter of "can I afford it."

They simply cannot afford it. The recent announcement of price increases in food and beverage items by the association of coffee shops operators simply means the regular 'teh tarik' is a luxury.

Sabah incidently has among the highest cost of living in Malaysia. The additional increase in prices of consumer items will further cripple livelihoods here.

The increases are a direct chain effect of the federal government's decision to impose 'minimal impact' increase in the price of fuel and sugar.

A recent DAP survey of Sabahans living in interior was received with angry respone.

Said Sabah DAP Parliamentary Liaison Chief for the Interior, Dr Benjamin Yapp: "We received so many complaints from people in the interior about once affordable goods now being too expensive for them.

"There are now signs of increasing poverty springing up everywhere especially in the interior, as well as in urban areas of Sabah.

"Poor parents, especially in the interior find it increasingly difficult to feed their families due to the increase in prices of foods and other consumer goods.

"How do we expect to eradicate poverty by end of this year, 2010, as declared by the government, when the majority of the people, especially the poor became poorer and poorer by the day?" he said.

Yapp argued that there was no logic to claim that Sabah's poverty index had improved when basic infrastructure and public amenities in the rural areas continued to be neglected.

'They (BN government) keep saying they are spending billions of ringgit for rural infrastructure development.

"But the roads are still bad and there's no infrastructures. Dilapidated public amenities and lack of treated piped water are the landmarks in Sabah's interior.

"They continued to plague our people especially the poor natives," he said.

Yapp noted that the party's wide-spread survey had also recorded growing poverty.

"DAP mobile service team's surveys in several districts around the state have found disturbing evidence of growing poverty even among those living in the urban and sub-urban areas.

"The surveys revealed that poverty in the interior were further compounded by high incidences of unemployment, retrenchment, lack of opportunities, bad business, sickness and old aged," he said.