KUALA LUMPUR – The Economy Ministry will speed up the implementation of the People’s Income Initiative (Inisiatif Pendapatan Rakyat, or IPR) by working with local authorities in each state.
Minister Rafizi Ramli said his ministry will work closely with local authorities to identify eligible applicants for the assistance.
“We will cross-check (the list) with eKasih system data… (for the) existing list of hardcore poor and the data of Sumbangan Tunai Rahmah recipients,” he told Dewan Rakyat today.
Rafizi said he will meet with all local authorities leaders nationwide to speed up the process so that the assistance will reach the target group as soon as possible.
He said this when answering R. Yuneswaran (Segamat-PH) who questioned how the IPR programme could help families categorised as B40 and individuals categorised as hardcore poor.
Rafizi said the ministry has received over 24,000 IPR applications to date, only after a week it was launched.
He said the number is increasing daily, while the government is officially targeting 130,000 people categorised as hardcore poor.
Rafizi said besides the hardcore poor, the ministry will also expand IPR offers to those in the B40 group.
Meanwhile, Rafizi explained that reducing hardcore poverty to zero is a long-term effort that cannot be solved within a day.
“Sure, if we are to give 130,000 people financial assistance monthly to raise their income to the level (more than RM1,200), then we can solve the hardcore poverty problem in a day.
“But what we are trying to achieve is to help them generate income, and not to create a community that is dependent on government assistance,” he said.
Rafizi was answering Datuk Seri Ismail Abd Muttalib’s (Maran-PN) supplementary question on whether the ministry was aware of factors that had made the previous government’s efforts to eradicate hardcore poverty fail.
Rafizi said the government’s programmes to help the hardcore poor differ from previous approaches as they aim to ensure an economic boom in poor families.
He said eradicating hardcore poverty means creating an ecosystem to ensure that the group will not fall back into the category in the future. – The Vibes, March 9, 2023
