KUALA LUMPUR: The Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (Ideas) has urged the federal government to be more open and transparent in providing statistics and micro-data in response to the recent report made by the UN Special Rapporteur on poverty.
It was reported that the assessment of poverty rate in Malaysia at 0.4% does not reflect the actual scenario.
According to the UN Special Rapporteur, there is a need to have a holistic social protection system and challenges faced by segments of society such as the indigenous people, refugees and stateless people.
The report also stressed that the national assessment is lacking in micro-data.
Ideas research manager Wan Ya Shin in a statement released on Tuesday has expressed similar issues as raised by the UN Special Rapporteur on the lack of transparency shown by Putrajaya.
“The report made by the UN Special Rapporteur highlights an important debate but these are not new issues and previous studies did underline them, too,” the release read.
Saying the issue was highlighted in the Malaysia Human Development Report 2013 by UNDP, Wan pointed out it was essential to enable further and in-depth analysis in finding the key distinction between the different levels of poverty.
“The Malaysia Human Development Report 2013 by UNDP stressed the need to relook how we should measure poverty and the multidimensional aspects of poverty.
“The key to enabling further and in-depth analysis is needed to address the distinction between chronic and transient poverty,” it added.
Expressing deep concern on the state of poverty among indigenous people, Ideas feels there is a need to disaggregate the data of Orang Asli in key national statistics for a holistic understanding.
“There needs to be disaggregated data on the Orang Asli in key national statistics to enable us to understand the state of poverty of the indigenous people and formulate targeted strategies,” it stated.
According to a Suhakam report in 2010, it was mentioned that the causes of educational barriers that high incidence of poverty, geographical barriers, cultural and linguistic barriers were among the issues that had led to the high drop-out rates of Orang Asli.
“In 2011, 30% of the Orang Asli children completed secondary school compared to the national 72% completion rate.”
On the social protection system, Wan recommended the programme should be incorporated with greater coordination by all ministries.
“In my study ‘Malaysia: Social Protection in Addressing Life Cycle Vulnerabilities’ in 2017, it was found that the social protection system in Malaysia was fragmented.
“This needs a greater coordination among the many ministries that were implementing social protection programmes.
“Monitoring and evaluation of the programmes should be incorporated into implementation policies in order to enhance their efficiency and effectiveness.” Wan commented.
In response to another highlighted issue on the lack of education and work accessibility among refugees’ children in Malaysia, Wan opined that giving the rights to the vulnerable groups could enhance the national GDP.
“Based on the finding in research by Ideas on the economic impact of granting refugees the right to work, it was found that refugees have the potential to contribute RM3 billion to GDP in 2024.
“Granting them education will help to generate RM6.5 billion to national GDP in 2040,” it stated.
Calling on Pakatan Harapan government to fulfil their promise in ensuring these children to have quality education, Ideas hoped the government would take different strategies to tackle poverty.
“We need a strong political commitment to enable access to data to investigate different measurements and dimensions of poverty as well as strategies for tackling poverty.
“The current government’s initiatives of looking at relative poverty and multidimensional poverty index are good measures.
“However, the absolute poverty rate is still an important indicator to determine who are the poor,” the statement added. – Bernama
