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Tuesday September 4, 2012

PM: Vital to ensure people are happy


PUTRAJAYA: The Government needs to work on not only increasing the people’s earning capacity, but also on making sure they are happy, said Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak.

He said the Government is using two yardsticks to measure national development – the conventional method that looks at per capita income and the happiness index of the people.

Najib said while it was important to improve the people’s earning capacity, it was equally vital to make sure that they were happy.

“Both criteria are important because if we only increase their income but the people are unhappy, or feel that our standard of living has not improved due to other reasons, it doesn’t mean that the correlation is positive.

“We have to look at things from these two indexes in detail,” he said at the monthly gathering of Prime Minister’s Department here.

Taking the examples of traffic problems and crime, Najib said any progress on either issue would have a direct impact on the people’s happiness index, making it necessary to use the index in the national context.

He also urged the civil service to strive harder to maintain the momentum spurred by the Government and economic transformation programmes.

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