KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 19 — From deceitful deals to fraudulent product schemes, financial exploitation has seeped into even the most remote Orang Asli villages, highlighting a worrying gap in digital and financial literacy that leaves these communities highly vulnerable.
Over time, such scams and exploitations have sown seeds of distrust and scepticism toward outsiders — a sentiment that now undermines the efforts of NGOs trying to deliver genuine welfare and educational support to these communities.
When it comes to financial literacy, SOLS Foundation executive director Daniela Strîmbei said the focus lies on three key questions: what communities do with the knowledge they already have, why they make certain decisions, and how they translate that knowledge into action.
“There is not much of the ‘what’ but there is a lot of the ‘why’, which is the pain because these communities are often in constant survival mode,” she told Malay Mail recently on the sidelines of the “Are Malaysians Financially Literate?” panel session held at Sasana Kijang here.
“Their ‘why’ is survival,” she added. “That kind of influences the ‘what’ — spending everything they have on basic needs, with nothing left over. And because of that, the ‘how’ is lacking as they struggle to make sense of their reality and to build some form of stability to make safer financial choices.”
She revealed that as many as 30 per cent of the Orang Asli settlements the foundation has worked with across Pahang, Perak, and Kelantan have fallen victim to some form of financial exploitation, either individually or collectively.
“There are highly ingenious scamming systems (in place) that affect these communities by robbing them of their last cents and that’s something we are not passionate about.”
Another example involves outsiders offering a product with supposedly low fees, only to deceive the community into making payments through their bank accounts using unfamiliar financial documents they signed — a deception that is only discovered later when they attempt withdrawals.
Although the scams may look different from those in cities, they all operate on the same principle — exploiting the psychology of vulnerable individuals under stress, Daniela said.
Most troubling, Daniela noted, is that some are indeed aware of the exploitation, but with limited options, they continue to comply out of necessity.
“They still depend on the nearest town to buy groceries,” she explained. “People there know they exist, and they need to form trade relations to sell their agricultural produce.”
“Sometimes, what we might consider scams, are in fact, forms of exploitation by their trading partners — for example, buying durians from them at just RM1 per fruit,” she said.
Their reasoning is simple: it’s better to earn something, however small, than nothing at all.
She then explained that the very traits that make these communities good-hearted, genuineness and trust, are what scammers exploit so effectively.
“These are very naive people, who never seek to hurt others, so you could imagine if someone would walk up to them with the intention to hurt them and they put their trust in that person.
“And once they are cheated, they lose trust even in formal financial systems, such as bank savings, setting off a chain of consequences that further harms them.
Daniela explained that financial literacy must be taught in a way that makes sense for these communities, covering basic planning and expense tracking, instead of concepts like everyone receiving their salary on the 30th of the month.
“Coupled with low financial literacy and digital skills, the barrier of critical thinking and assessment is very low.
“So we have to increase awareness on the ‘what’, provide basic tools on the ‘how’ to push towards the mindset of moving from survival to more sustainable approach,” she said.
