PH Women support proposal for monthly income for the poor
MIRI: Pakatan Harapan National Women Chief for Sarawak Affairs and PKR Women national vicechief Voon Siak Ni welcomes as pragmatic and holistic approach a proposal by former Finance Minister Tun Daim Zainuddin for a monthly basic income for the poor and needy.
“If Tun Daim can work out a system which help the poor and needy but will not bleed the nation, why not ?,” she commented.
Although details of the proposal are yet to be made public, she supports the move to overhaul the national approach to help the poor as cash hand outs introduced by the previous government was bleeding the country’s coffers.
“I am always concerned for the welfare of the poor and elderly in our country where many still have to toil for their livelihood especially when their children do not have enough for their own families,” she said.
She expressed confidence in Daim who has vast experience as a former Finance Minister and international corporate figure in finance and banking industry to come up with a good financial plan for the people and nation.
Daim leads Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s inner circle of advisers known as Council of Eminent Persons which included former Bank Negara governor Tan Sri Dr Zeti Aziz, Malaysian sugar king Robert Kuok and others.
“He floated the idea to overhaul Malaysia’s social safety net by setting up a fund that pays out basic income to the poor, pointing out that last year alone, the government spent about RM37 billion on subsidies, various kinds of aid and BR1M cash hand outs.
He suggested that the money could instead be channelled to the fund that will then invest in assets where returns are distributed as basic income each month instead of one-time pay outs.
He argued that it would be better if the money is invested to generate sufficient income to take care of the needs of these groups of people.