KUALA LUMPUR: The per capita income will be used to determine which households fall in the hardcore poverty category moving forward, says Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
He said this would be accurate compared to the previous mechanism, which looked at household income.
“Previously, we looked at household income but noticed some issues there.
“If a household earns RM2,000 monthly but there are four members in the household, the actual income is only RM500.
“Hence, we are now moving from income to per capita instead as the latter is more accurate and also takes into account the number of children and dependents,” he said during Prime Minister Question Time on Tuesday.
Anwar was responding to a question by Datuk Siti Zailah Mohd Yusoff (PN-Rantau Panjang), who asked about the latest government measures to end hardcore poverty and the mechanism used to determine hardcore poor categories.
Anwar added that some 126,372 household heads were under the hardcore poor category as of Jan 31 last year and the issue was resolved by July 29 this year.
“However, we are aware that the number has increased, as the success of this initiative has led to new registrations.
“By July 29, we had resolved the initial cases, and on Aug 1, we reopened for new requests, including older ones that felt the need to apply again. This amounts to 22,893.
“As of Oct 21 this year, 15,029 household heads or 65.6% of the hardcore poor cases have been resolved, and we will continue to work on addressing the remaining cases,” he said.
The Prime Minister also stressed that there is no discrimination when it comes to eradicating hardcore poverty.
“We do not look at race. When we work on eradicating poverty, we do not make distinctions according to race.
“It is not true that the help is only for the Malays.
“Those in the hardcore poor category, as long as they are Malaysian citizens, will receive assistance without discrimination,” he said in response to a supplementary question by S. Kesavan (PH-Sungai Siput).
