Prabakaran appointed Mitra special committee chairperson

 

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has appointed Batu MP P Prabakaran as Special Committee chairperson of the Malaysian Indian Transformation Unit (Mitra).

Prabakaran will replace R Ramanan, who is assuming the role of Entrepreneur and Cooperatives Development deputy minister.

Ramanan, who is also the Sungai Buloh MP, was appointed as the Mitra special committee chairperson in April 2023 by Anwar.

Four other committee members were appointed at the same time as Ramanan, including Senator Sivarraajh Chandran, Klang MP V Ganabatirau (DAP), Segamat MP R Yuneswaran (PKR), and Mitra director-general K Raveendran Nair.

Ramanan was appointed as a deputy minister in December's cabinet reshuffle, taking over from K Saraswathy who now holds the position of National Unity deputy minister.

Mitra, launched in 2013 by former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak, was initially known as the Socio-Economic Development of the Indian Community Unit (Sedic).

It was established to help poor Indians uplift their income capacity.

Sedic was disbanded when the BN government fell after the 14th general election and was later revived as Mitra under the Pakatan Harapan administration.

After the Harapan government fell, Mitra was placed under the National Unity Ministry.

It was placed under the Prime Minister’s Department shortly after the coalition government took over in 2022, but was transferred back to the National Unity Ministry last December.

The Mitra funds issue came under the spotlight in 2021 following the arrest of several company directors, who were suspected of embezzling funds allocated by the agency.

A total of 337 companies, organisations, and NGOs were identified as having received grants totalling about RM203 million from Mitra, between 2019 and 2021. - Mkini