PETALING JAYA: Children in the B40 group are experiencing extreme levels of food and nutritional poverty. They are at risk of becoming a “lost generation”, Permatang Pauh MP Nurul Izzah Anwar said today.
Students in this group, she said, have fallen significantly behind in their studies due to the lack of proper access and use of online learning.
From April to May 2021, a survey involving 332 households in Permatang Pauh also revealed that women-headed households and their children are significantly poorer than their male-headed counterparts.
The survey was done under the guidance of Professor Fatimah Kari, a multi-dimensional poverty expert and former UM Economics Professor.
It was done to identify the deprivations faced by families on the ground, so more targeted and effective aid could be disbursed accordingly.
“Malaysia is currently experiencing the tragedy of severe child poverty post-Covid-19. This has tangible ripple effects on their education, social mobility and future prospects, so much so that they fare worse than their parents,” Nurul said in a statement today.
“This is the heart-breaking reality experienced now by our ‘Keluarga Malaysia’, our Malaysian families on the ground.”
By the year 2020, she said the total number of social and subsidy programmes launched increased from only 95 in 2012 to 137. However, the total expenditure for these programmes fell from 3.46% of the GDP (45.5 billion) in 2012 to only 1.81% of the GDP (25.5 billion) in 2020.
To illustrate this point further, Aid for Needy Children (Bantuan Kanak-Kanak) under the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development was only delivered to 62,000 families in 2020, which is less than one per cent of all Malaysian households.
As for Aid for Older Persons (Bantuan Warga Emas), also under the Ministry of Women, only RM600 million was delivered to less than four percent of Malaysians aged 60 and above.
“Why are these figures so low? Because narrow conditions for eligibility are used to gate-keep the distribution of aid. I am aware that Malaysia’s Poverty Line Income was in fact increased from RM980 to RM2208 in 2019.
“However, aid disbursement in 2020 still utilised the older PLI. It is absolutely certain that many individuals in need have been left out as they are categorised as ineligible.
“Who are we really protecting here? Our existing taxation policies are mostly regressive, therefore the government needs to introduce new progressive taxation to finance our nation’s social programmes,” said the Permatang Pauh MP.
She said we can look to the policies enacted by Franklin Roosevelt for inspiration. The Revenue Act 1935 introduced in the US increased federal income taxes on higher income levels. This progressive tax collected up to 75% from those with the highest incomes (i.e. those making over USD$ 1 million annually).
To offer an excerpt from a KRI report: “Capital gains remains untaxed in Malaysia, except only for gains from the disposal of real property or on the sale of shares in a real property company. Taxing wealth may be pertinent for Malaysia given that wealth is typically more unequally distributed than income in other countries.”
Even before Covid-19, Nurul said women have borne the brunt of structural inequalities and injustices that caused them to be more multi-dimensionally deprived. Covid-19 exacerbated these existing inequalities, making women more vulnerable than ever in the aspects of:
● Finance – through the double burden they face;
●Health – the lack of diagnostic tools and treatment for female diseases such as cervical cancer, or the prevalence of period poverty, and;
● Social mobility – the lack of re-skilling opportunities available to them, or the marginalisation they face in the workforce.
Turning to housing policies, she said these need to include the needs of those women who are the heads of their respective households.
“To further safeguard generations under the care of such households, I urge the government to emulate the Shariah Court Family Support Division’s initiative that provides divorced mothers an advance on their alimony in the event their husband fails to uphold this responsibility, leaving their families high and dry.
“RMK-12 (12th Malaysia Plan) must specifically provide an ecosystem that focuses on the needs of gender; ‘from cradle to grave; from victim to abuser’,“ she said.
She said a holistic approach to protecting women includes supporting efforts to reform the Prison department, through the formation of a Sentencing Council.
“The government must also urgently form a Prison Reforms Working Committee to enact reforms in probation, and to transfer prison health functions to the Ministry of Health”.
She said a Khazanah Research Institute report outlined several laws in Malaysia that were drafted to protect its citizens. Unfortunately none of these laws specifically protect children and families.
Families and children severely lack support – and this includes the 4,422 children who lost their parents or guardians to Covid-19, 154 of whom were completely orphaned after both parents passed away from the disease.
“Our study findings have also concluded that it is necessary to provide an additional RM256 per capita to meet the nutritional needs of B40 children in Permatang Pauh.
“Our children also need reliable internet access as soon as possible to allow them to continue their online learning. A total 23,910 students in Permatang Pauh will be forced to wait for RMK-12’s fibre optic plan. It is a costly investment and requires a long wait, which were concerns highlighted in my letter to the minister.”
If we refer to the Mid-Term Review of the 11th Malaysia Plan, we can see that high costs still pose a major challenge for the installation of digital infrastructure, resulting in insufficient or incomplete broadband coverage in rural areas, she said “I believe we are all aware of how RM 3 billion was wasted on the fruitless Bestarinet programme. To date, thousands of schools are still waiting for viable internet connection.
“Why don’t we fund more ‘grounded’ mega projects by implementing more cost-effective and easy-to-implement technologies? An example of this would be TV White Space technology, which utilises the spectrum of unused or unassigned television channels,” she added.
Kenya for example is known to have successfully implemented TV White Space. Ever since broadband connectivity increased with a service speed of 16 Mbps megabits per second, student performance in Kenya has increased in every subject.
Unfortunately in Malaysia, this technology is seen as a threat to local telecommunications companies looking to expand their cable and fibre networks. All we need now is for the government to approve the relevant regulation.
“In the most grounded sense, we must do our best to protect our Malaysian families,“ Nurul added.
Source: The Sun Daily
