Muhyiddin: Need to determine if UN expert's poverty assessment true

Home Minister Muhyiddin Yassin has urged the government to “take cognisance” of a recent statement from a UN expert that the poverty rate in the country was far lowerthan the official figures.

Maintaining that the government had achieved “great success” in reducing poverty over the past few decades, he called for efforts to determine the veracity of the findings.

“When there is a remark by someone (from) overseas [...] we want to take cognisance of what they said and we need to establish whether (what he said was) factual or was it based on just random sampling.

“There must be certain basic principles for how to measure things like poverty. If you just select (an) area, look here and there [...] and you say ‘Oh, the whole country is facing that problem’ when there are 30 million people in Malaysia, then that is not the right way to do (things).

“(But) I don’t want to question that,” the minister said when asked by the media after holding a Merdeka celebration at his ministry in Putrajaya today.

Muhyiddin hoped Economic Affairs Minister Mohamed Azmin Ali would be able to shed light on the issue.

“[...] Importantly, we have a cabinet meeting tomorrow and my colleagues, especially the Economic Affairs minister who has all the data and figures, has to respond to these issues, I think,” he said.

Azmin previously disputed the findings of UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston that estimated Malaysia’s poverty rate to be close to 15 percent, and not 0.4 percent as the government claims.

Alston’s preliminary report was based on several months of research and calls for submissions by his team.

The project culminated in an 11-day visit to all the Malaysian states, whereby the New York University law professor met with various government officials, communities, activists and academics.

[More to follow] - Mkini