Friday March 31, 2006

Bridging income gaps for equality

TO achieve income parity in the longer term, efforts will be undertaken to reduce income gaps among ethnic communities as well as between rural and urban areas for more equitable distributions of the fruits of further economic growth in the country.

Hence, income generating activities and employment opportunities will be created to narrow the income gap between bumiputra and Chinese from 1:1.64 in 2004 to 1:1.50 in 2010. The income gap between bumiputra and Indians is targeted to reduce from 1:1.27 in 2004 to 1:1.15 in 2010.

Besides poverty eradication efforts, focus of distributional strategies and programmes will be on the creation of a bigger and more prosperous bumiputra middle-income group through human capital development.

These will include intensification of the employment restructuring programmes to create a greater number of successful entrepreneurs, increasing ownership and wealth among the bumiputra community, enhancing education and training as well as providing more opportunities for bumiputra to competitively gain employment in higher paying jobs, particularly at managerial, professional and technical levels.

Though poor, these children who are from poor families in a rural village in Sabah know how to have a good time together. Rural development will be intensified through the modernisation and commercialisation of agricultural activities as well as diversification of the rural economy.

Income enhancing measures for the poor and lower income households will be broadened to include the bottom 40% of households, of which bumiputra constituted 76% in 2004, to enable them to move up to higher income categories.

Additional training will be made available to unemployed graduates, and at the same time training colleges especially in the rural areas will be upgraded and more will be established.

Rural development will be intensified through the modernisation and commercialisation of agricultural activities as well as diversification of the rural economy.

The private sector is expected to be more involved in accelerating the growth of bumiputra employment and restructuring their employment pattern.

Education and training will remain an important strategy to meet the objectives of increasing bumiputra employment in the professional, managerial and other high-income occupation.

Enrolment into Universiti Teknologi Mara will be expanded including through a franchise system with bumiputra private institutions of higher education.

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