Pakatan’s priority must be poverty eradication

Pakatan Rakyat should consider the creation of two new departments – a department for the eradication of poverty, and a minority affairs department.

COMMENT

By Ali Cordoba

Pakatan Rakyat is planning to come out with its latest electoral manifesto with a plethora of new measures and policies that will literally transform the face of Malaysia. While the opposition members has hinted on some major measures, little has been heard of some vital ones.

In the wake of the next budgetary performance by the Barisan National (BN), the Pakatan Rakyat will surely base its manifesto on the loopholes that will appear in Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak’s speech at the august Parliament.

This will give the opposition an edge in gearing towards the final preparations for its manifesto, which it is hoped will be a unified manifesto.

Members of Pakatan, including Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim, has already hinted at measures to reduce car prices, demolish tolls and build cheaper houses. These measure will surely benefit the rakyat who are considered less fortunate.

They will also be a real bag of goodies for the young generation of Malaysians. The younger generations are definitely having problems in getting their own homes due to the spiraling prices in the property sector.

Cheaper cars, we are told, will also help the Malaysians save more money by paying less interest and less duties. These (duties and interests) have been earmarked by Pakatan as the very reason for the hardship many families had faced in the past.

Additional measures needed

Nevertheless, Pakatan should put in action a series of additional measures that will help transform Malaysia in the long run.

These measures could be as follows:

Under the Prime Minister’s Office, the Pakatan Rakyat should consider the creation of two new departments – a department for the eradication of poverty, and a minority affairs department

These can also be turned into ministries but if they are under the PM’s Office and their heads act as ‘Ministers in the PM’s Department’, there may be a direct control by the PM himself on the monitoring of the eradication and alleviating of both poverty and racial divisions.

To achieve the aims of getting more Malaysians to enjoy the windfalls of cheaper cars, lesser excise and customs duties and cheaper homes, the living standards of a large number of people must be raised in the first place. Hence, these two elements should become the priority of a Pakatan regime.

It must be said that recent reports indicated that Malaysia had a million families living within the poverty or below the poverty line. If that is the case, then it means that at lest a quarter of the nation is living in such dire straits. This cannot be allowed to continue as the entire population should benefit from the economic benefits the nation will seemingly enjoy under Pakatan.

Why a Minority Affairs Department? For too long, the Malaysians of minority origin have been under-privileged and this is despite various efforts by the Barisan National to reduce this problem.

The issue they faced with was not the availability of funds but a real political will to tackle the problem. The same goes for the problems of poverty in the country. The problem was not tackled properly and poverty has increased in many communities.

With the formation of these two departments or at best ministries, the government will have a direct hand in the promulgation of rapid solutions or long term ones that could help rid the country of poverty and inequalities.

Economic reliefs

Thus arise the need for solutions and some of the solutions could well be in the formulation of ‘economic reliefs’ plans by the government in the future.

The economic relief plans could be as follows:

• A national program for the poor and destitute, and

• Economic assistance to low income earners as follows: i) special aid and/or non-refundable aid for people below poverty level, and, ii) special aid to citizens, residents and immigrants of low level income and in poverty or living on the verge of poverty.

What these will achieve is to strengthen the lower class while it will be pro-active in eliminating poverty in the country. Micro financing could also be used based on the Grameen Bank system or otherwise in order to assist the people who will fall into the categories listed above.

It is hoped, with this article, Pakatan would take the eradication of poverty as a priority indeed.

On the other hand, the citizens who are suffering economically and are in the bottom of the poverty bracket could also be given full support to educate their children.

Based on the realities of education in Malaysia and in the event the PTPTN is dismantled, the very poor and needy will still be faced with many difficulties to get their children to study at higher levels.

The role of these departments under the PM’s Office will be to ensure that these families are not left behind and then only the Pakatan’s manifesto can be considered as one which is reformist and modernist altogether.

Ali Cordoba writes extensively on local politics.