Sabah poverty: EPU formula all wrong, says Sipaun

By Dominic Legeh

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah continues to top the list of poor states in the country because the federal government's allocation for each state is based on the number of Malaysian citizens in each state and not the actual population.

Former Malaysian Human Rights Commission (Suhakam) vice-chairman, Simon Sipaun said the Malaysia Plan formula which was used by the Economic Planning Unit (EPU) was not feasible for Sabah because it did not take into account the thousands of illegal immigrants.

He said nine years ago when Suhakam was under the chairmanship of Musa Hitam, they had a dialogue in Kuala Lumpur which involved the relevant ministers and the EPU.

“During the meeting, I asked (the EPU) how they allocated money to all the states when formulating the Malaysia Plan.

"In the case of Sabah, I said, there are many illegal immigrants in Sabah and supposing that we have half a million illegal immigrants in Sabah, do you take into account the total number of people in Sabah when you allocate the money or not,” he recalled.

Sipaun said the answer given to him was that the EPU only took into account the actual number of Malaysians who are in Sabah.

“I told them this was not fair because if there are only one million registered Malaysian citizens in Sabah, but the overall number of people in Sabah included 500,000 illegal immigrants then when we (in Sabah) get the RM1 million allocation we have to share it among 1.5 million people.

“I also explained to them why it is not fair because the illegal immigrants still have to go to the hospitals, schools maybe, they use the roads and everything and so we (Sabahans) are actually short-changed.

"The EPU's response was that they didn't know the figure. I told them that it is their job to know the actual number of people (in Sabah) because if not who else would know about it.

“When I came back to Sabah later, I wrote to the (then) Sabah state secretary (KY Mustafa) to tell him that I was very surprised with what I heard (during the meeting) and I asked if he can find out what the actual situation was.

“I got a response from KY Mustafa. He said he had referred it to the state cabinet and that was all that I heard about it,” he said.

Unfair to penalise voters

About a year ago, when Sipaun was still in Suhakam, he raised the matter again at another forum.

“But, even there nobody could confirm what was the actual situation. The person who gave the talk said they based their calculations according to the needs.

"But that does not answer the question. So I think this is probably one of the factors contributing to Sabah being the poorest state in the country.

“The other contributing factors are disproportionate allocation of funds. I noticed that the government is giving so much funds to the Barisan Nasional (BN) elected representatives only.

"But the money does not belong to the BN because it actually comes from the taxpayers.

“Why should they (those voting the oppositions) be deprived … I think it is most unfair and I don’t think it is correct for the government to do that.

“Although a constituency has an opposition elected representative, not everybody in that constituency voted for the opposition.

"There are also those who have supported and voted for the BN in the opposition-ruled constituencies, so why should they be penalised.

"I don’t know what is the rational … to me this is an abuse of the public funds,” he said of the special allocation announced by Chief Minister Musa Aman last month.

"It should be given to every elected representative. They should be enjoying the same amount of facilities.

“Why should you deprive the people’s representatives simply because they are in the opposition. They are also members of the Parliament and state legislative assembly,” he said.

Sipaun also disagreed with claims by some that the poverty situation in the state was due to ignorance of the federal government.

“I think it is just a matter of mindset … they want to penalise the opposition which, to me, should not be the case,” he said.

Sipaun was commenting on the World Bank’s 2010 Malaysia Economic Monitor (MEM) report that 40% of the country's poor were centred in Sabah.

The respected former civil servant is now a member of the Advisory Board of the Malaysian Anti- Corruption Commission (MACC). He was a Suhakam Commissioner from 2000 to 2010.