KUALA LUMPUR, July 7 — The Malaysian Trades Union Congress (MTUC) today urged the government to commit to its plan to review the national poverty line for effective policies that will help the country’s growing marginalised groups.
Its secretary-general J. Solomon said MTUC is particularly alarmed by the remarks yesterday by Philip Alston, a former United Nations special rapporteur, who said the Perikatan Nasional government is flipping back on its commitment to address Malaysia’s extreme poverty and human rights.
“Our concerns are premised on the fact that most of the B40 and M40 categories in Malaysia comprise of blue collar workers who are represented by MTUC at the International Labour Organisation,” Soloman said in a statement, referring to the bottom 40 per cent of wage earners and the 40 per cent of middle income earners.
He said the B40 and M40 have survived on meagre salaries with little savings for emergencies or old age and remain unable to afford to own decent housing, forcing them to live in cramped conditions in poorly maintained rented apartments.
“The absence of effective policies due to misguided data and now the economic fallout from Covid-19 have worsened their plight.
“We strongly urge the government to underline its readiness to make the changes needed for the sake of the millions of marginalised people whose plight was ignored, deliberately or otherwise, by successive governments due to bad policies drawn from inaccurate data,” he said.
Solomon said that there is credible evidence to show the failure of the current poverty benchmark to accurately represent the reality in the country, resulting in policies that do not reach the target groups.
“The failures meant billions of ringgit in tax payers money were futilely spent, despite more and more Malaysians becoming impoverished and the continued widening of the wealth disparity in the country over the years.
“Official statistics claim that the incidence of poverty fell from 37.4 per cent of all households in 1979 to 8.5 per cent in 1999, further falling to 0.4 per cent in 2016. Malaysians have long felt a sense of disconnect with official poverty statistics because their income is barely enough to make ends meet and yet, we are told that by official count that there is hardly any poverty in the country,” he said.
Solomon said that previous administrations were able to claim success in eradicating absolute and hardcore poverty only because they set the bar very low.
“However this computation is based on an unrealistic and outdated poverty line measurement of RM980 for a household of four per month, which was mainly utilised in the 1970's.
“A wage of RM980 is ridiculously low, especially for urban areas, when the living wage ought to be at least RM2,700. The poverty line index remains set at a very low bar, and many households are at risk of falling below the poverty line,” he said.
He pointed out that Alston's initial findings on Malaysian poverty, which was first made public in August last year, was subsequently confirmed by Chief Statistician Datuk Seri Mohd Uzir Mahidin in February, who used the multidimensional model of education, health, quality of life and household income to estimate Malaysia's poverty rate to be at 15.6 per cent.
“MTUC once again calls on the government to take the matter of poverty seriously. Maintaining the poverty rate at 0.4 per cent is simply wishful thinking and failing to take remedial measures to reduce poverty in the country will also result in dire consequences.
“Any resetting the poverty line must be based on a more realistic criteria which takes into account the steep cost of living and stagnant wages of workers. Only by doing so can the rakyat benefit from policies which address the core reasons for their problems,” Solomon said, adding this was a chance for the government to use Alston's report as a important base to help redress one of the key problems affecting more than 40 per cent of the population.
Alston's report on his visit last year was published yesterday, in which he said the Malaysian government's reversal is deeply concerning because the current line is inadequate and almost universally considered to be misleadingly low.
Although Alston acknowledged that Malaysia has made impressive progress against poverty in the past forty years, its continued use of an outdated and unrealistic poverty line obscures the troubling reality that millions scrape by on very low incomes, a situation only made worse by the Covid-19 pandemic.
