‘Govt working to reduce number of e-Kasih participants’
KUCHING: The number of needy who are listed in e-Kasih but have yet to receive any aid will hopefully be reduced to zero by the end of this month, with only 45 remaining on the list.
Minister of Welfare, Community Well Being, Women, Family and Childhood Development Datuk Fatimah Abdullah who said this added that previously the number was 419 people as at Jan 1 this year.
“Of this 45, we need to followup with some of them. Some of them have documentation issues, the older ones still have IC starting with K; some of them cannot be reached as the road was cut off and we could not reach them, while some have received it but the data has not been keyed in,” she told a press conference after a focus group meeting on eradicating poverty in Sarawak at a hotel here recently.
“Some of them, especially the Penans in Belaga have moved and they could not be found at the address in the system. We will try to locate them and if we can’t we will remove them from the system. This is a big challenge when they move.”
On the number of hardcore poor in the state, there was a decrease from 30,481 in June last year to 26,322 in June this year. Though there is a decrease, the state is still far from achieving the zero hardcore poor target by 2018, Fatimah said.
The number of those who have moved above the poverty line (above RM990 in household income) has increased from 39,125 in March 2016 to 47,812 in March this year. The increase was due to increase in their income, she said.
“To get more poor people above the poverty line, there are various programmes to aid them, like the 1Azam and we are expecting 625 household heads will benefit from the 1Azam programme. We are also targeting an additional 100 household heads for this year in the programme.
Fatimah also said that she believed that the ministry had done well in terms of performance.
“In fact, the ministry’s permanent secretary has presented our excellent performance report during a special session of the Sabah and Sarawak Budget Screening on May 29 (this year) in Putrajaya.
“We have to work very hard in hardcore poor poverty eradication so that the target of zero hardcore poor by 2018 can be achieved.”