MB: 'Kiss' card to aid poor mothers in Selangor

Thirty-thousand mothers from low-income families which earn below RM2,000 in monthly wages will be given RM200 in food aid a month, announced Selangor Menteri Besar Mohamed Azmin Ali today.

The new programme, dubbed "Kasih Ibu Smart Selangor" (Kiss), which was unveiled in Selangor's Budget 2018 in the state legislative assembly, will take off next year.

Mothers who qualified to receive the aids will be issued a "Kiss" card, which entitled them to obtain basic food supplies, such as rice, cooking oil, flour, school uniform and equipment for their children.

This is meant to help the mothers, who were especially burdened by the implementation of goods and services tax (GST), according to Azmin.

In his budget speech, Azmin claimed that GST is the "mother of the rising living cost, which the "mother of all budgets" presented by Prime Minister Najib Razak last Friday, could not resolve.

"Mothers are the most affected person in a family by the implementation of goods and services tax (GST)," he said.

"The price hikes on onions, red chillies and ikan kembong sometimes affects their emotion. Many of them have to help their husbands to earn an extra living to meet the rise in living costs," he added.

"The state government does not want to see this happen anymore," he said.

According to the statistics department, he said as many as 108,800 households or 30,000 families earned below RM1,900 in monthly wages as of 2016.

"Every mother who is qualified will receive RM2,400 a year or RM200 per month," he added.

In comparison, under Najib's budget, women who are at least five months pregnant will be allowed to leave work an hour earlier. 

Additionally, women who have been out of work for more than two years will have access to a 12-month tax holiday between 2018 and 2020.- Mkini