Johari moots development policy tailor-made for B40 Indians

 

Johari Abdul Ghani, 58, was born in Kampung Pandan, part of the Titiwangsa constituency, and had his early education in local schools.

KUALA LUMPUR: Barisan Nasional election candidate Johari Abdul Ghani has proposed a special development programme to improve the lot of poor members of the Malaysian Indian community.

Equal opportunities, especially for the young, and access to education lie at the heart of this policy which is aimed at Indian families in the bottom 40% income-group (the B40).

“We need to make sure that there is food on their table, that they have access to education. This is the only way to eradicate poverty in any community in Malaysia,” said Johari, who hopes to win a fresh term as MP for Titiwangsa.

“It is the same for everyone. If a family is poor, the children must be educated so they can escape poverty,” he said in an interview with FMT.

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Official figures from 2015 show that 91% of those in the B40 group had an SPM certificate or less. The lockdowns and restrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic has raised fears of B40 children lagging behind children from higher-income families.

Johari, 58, speaks from personal experience when he talks about humble beginnings. A Kuala Lumpur native, he was born and grew up in Kampung Pandan and had his early education at the local schools.

His parents were not well off but placed a priority on education for their children. He said some parents struggled to send their children to schools as they lived far from the schools and could not afford to pay school bus fees.

“So how do we address this? We need elected representatives who are able to find solutions. At the same time, we must also re-educate parents” some of whom were capable of paying subscriptions for Astro or Netflix television services “but aren’t willing to make sacrifices for their children’s education”.

Political and government leaders must also be made to understand the problems of the hardcore poor and that the solution lay in ensuring a level playing field, especially in education, said Johari, who was second finance minister from 2016 to 2018.

Johari said he was glad that he had managed to redevelop Indian areas in Titiwangsa, where he was the local MP from 2013 to 2018.

“In Kampung Pandan there is still a squatter area, but that is across the Selangor border. On the side of the KL border, we’ve redeveloped the area so there are no more squatters. So whoever becomes the elected representative for Pandan needs to look at this, then we can resolve the squatter problem in the whole area,” he said.

The Titiwangsa constituency in Kuala Lumpur spans the areas from Setapak to Kampung Baru, Kampung Datuk Keramat, Desa Pandan, Taman Maluri and Kampung Pandan. Titiwangsa lies between Setiawangsa to the north, Bukit Bintang to the south and the Pandan constituency, in Selangor, to the east.

The constituency has an electorate of 80,747 people with an ethic breakdown of Malays (70%), Chinese (17%), Indians (9%) and others (2.8%).

Johari is in a four-cornered contest involving candidates from Pakatan Harapan, Perikatan Nasional and Pejuang. His biggest rival is former federal territories minister Khalid Samad (PH), a two-term MP for Shah Alam who was moved to contest in Titiwangsa. - FMT