Govt: Old poverty line used for aid distribution, new benchmark too expensive

 

PARLIAMENT | A deputy minister has confirmed that welfare aid was deliberately distributed during the Covid-19 pandemic based on an outdated metric for measuring poverty.

This was to lessen the government’s financial burden.

In July 2020, the national monthly poverty line income (PLI) was revised from RM980 to RM2,208.

The PLI is significant because it classifies which households and how many of them fall below the poverty line and thus need help.

In her 12th Malaysia Plan (12MP) wrapping up speech for the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry this afternoon, deputy minister Siti Zailah Mohd Yusoff (above) said that welfare had thus far been distributed based on the RM980 PLI.

“We will use the new PLI in 2022. Before this, we have been using the old PLI.

“The reason why we are still using the old PLI is that we saw that the financial burden borne by the government was too big.

“We saw that if we used the new PLI, I was informed that the financial responsibility borne by the government would be more than RM3 billion. This was a big thing, more so in the current situation,” she said.

This was in response to a question from Nurul Izzah Anwar (Pakatan Harapan-Permatang Pauh), who had asked if it was true that the old PLI value had been used instead of the RM2,208 PLI when deciding which families received government aid.

She had also asked the ministry to verify whether it was true that just 1 percent of households with children received aid, as reported in a Khazanah Research Institute (KRI) study.

Nurul Izzah further urged for an explanation why KRI had found that just 4 percent of the elderly (aged 60 and above) had received aid.

In response, Siti Zailah did not confirm or deny the percentages but said aid was channelled to children and elderly people who fulfilled the criteria.

“People sometimes misunderstand that all elderly people qualify for the aid. This is not true.

“Only those who truly qualify will receive the aid. This includes the aid for children as well,” said the deputy minister.

The Women, Family and Community Development Ministry is in charge of distributing aid through the Social Welfare Department. - Mkini