Project 80,000 in KL - save the B40 first

The new minister of Federal Territories, Khalid Samad has fired the first salvo. He has asked eight political appointees of BN to leave the Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL).

When asked by Malaysiakini what he would do if the eight refused to leave, he said: “Then I will tell the Kuala Lumpur mayor not to use the advisory board, we will form our own committee."

Accordingly, if this scenario would come to pass, Khalid Samad added, the committee would comprise elected representatives from Kuala Lumpur. Is Khalid Samad being hasty? The answer is clearly no.

If anything, Khalid Samad is making a superb move on three grounds. One, the appointees have been sleeping on their jobs, literally.

If they hadn't, some 80,000 families living in the low-cost flats in the city would have already seen an improvement in their standards of living. They haven't.

Yet, the conditions of these flats continue to languish, even though it was BN that had started the housing projects first.

Indeed, although these flats can go as cheap as RM120 a month, they are offered to those who are earning less than a combined income of RM 3,000 a month anyway.

These families constitute what is known as the B40 group. They deserve the help of the authorities (first) due to their abject living conditions in the urban sprawl that is Kuala Lumpur.

Oddly, research by DM Analytics of Muhammad Khalid, who is the secretary general of the Council of Elders, has also shown that the children in these low cost housing were able to perform academically better than those in the national schools.

Indeed, if only their living conditions can be improved, especially their food intake, Muhammad Khalid believes "they can fly".

Out of sight...

By not looking into the security and hygiene of these low cost housing estates, which reside within the midst of Kuala Lumpur itself, the old guards of BN have shown that they don't care.

What is out of sight, is invariably, out of mind; at least the minds of BN leaders, who are used to a life of affluence. Of the thirteen representatives in DBKL, only five are elected based on actual professional qualifications.

Thus, Khalid Samad is right to boot the eight BN political appointees out. It also shows the seriousness of Amanah, where Khalid Samad is a key member, to get down and dirty almost immediately.

Second, since the children in low cost housing are experiencing physical and mental stunting due to malnutrition and deprivation of nutritious food, speed and efficiency to redeem their living conditions must be of the essence.

The only way to achieve both aims is by eliminating the dead wood, or creating a new committee that the mayor of Kuala Lumpur can listen to, without which the democratic victory of May 9 would be pointless.

Indeed, Tashny Sukumaran, a South China Morning Post (SCMP) freelance journalist reported on March 8, 2018 that the situation was quite dire:

"Despite a national poverty rate of less than one percent, compared with India’s poverty rate of 20 per cent, the children in these low-cost flats face high rates of malnutrition and poverty, with 99.7 percent living in relative poverty and seven percent in absolute poverty." (‘Why Are Children in Malaysia Going Hungry?’ - Tashny Sukumaran, SCMP March 3, 2018).

Thirdly, the situation in low cost housing is getting worse with each passing day. Of the16 low-cost housing projects in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor, a Unicef study cited by SCMP that interviewed 966 heads of households, which are home to 2,142 children, found 22 percent of children below the age of five are stunted. As Tasny further added:

"Indeed, some 15 percent are underweight, 20 per cent wasting (acute malnutrition) and 23 per cent are overweight or obese. Stunting, or impaired growth stemming from poor nutrition and inadequate psychosocial stimulation, can dramatically affect a child’s cognitive abilities in later life."

To be sure, Tashny is right to question why such problems are still affecting Malaysia. Malaysia has six times the gross domestic product (GDP) of Ghana. In fact, Malaysia and Ghana had started from the same economic thresholds in mid 1950s.

But between the two countries, Malaysian children in the low cost housing are the ones who are facing the gravest risk of having permanent cognitive disabilities, some of which can forever impair their economic prospects in future.

---

PHAR KIM BENG is a Harvard/Cambridge Commonwealth Fellow, a former Monbusho scholar at the University of Tokyo and visiting scholar at Waseda University. - Mkini