First payments of monetary aid to be made on Monday

A recipient of BR1M, now renamed BSH, checks her vouchers. The government says it will use the old BR1M recipients list when it resumes the cash handout programme next year. (Bernama pic)

PUTRAJAYA: The first phase of the 2019 Cost of Living Aid (BSH) of RM300 for eligible households will be paid on Monday (Jan 28), says Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng.

He said the assistance is expected to benefit up to 4.1 million households involving an allocation of RM1.2 billion.

“Payment will be made directly into their bank accounts,” he said in a statement.

Lim said the government had to use the old database to enable the payments to be made before February 2019, although there was a high chance that the list included names of those who were not eligible.

According to him, the process to remove the names of ineligible recipients, namely those not in the bottom 40% household income group (B40) will take a long time.

Once the database has been updated, he said, the balance of BSH payments will be channelled under phase two and three using the new method as announced in Budget 2019.

“The updating process needs to be implemented for BSH 2019 payments in the second and third phases in line with the improved BSH programme which is more targeted, and is based on the size of the household,” he said.

According to Lim, the new criteria and method of payment will be announced soon. FMT