MB: Johor looking into ways to help improve people’s livelihood
ISKANDAR PUTERI: The Johor government is looking into conducting a statewide online census that will help it come up with more effective policies to benefit people in the state.
Mentri Besar Datuk Hasni Mohammad said the state government will start collecting and consolidating such data as part of its Johor Digital Agenda, one of the three main highlights under Johor Budget 2021.
“Among data that will be collected through a census are the poverty rate and income level of the people in Johor.
“The census will also involve data that’s available from the Finance Ministry, the Inland Revenue Board as well as the e-Ihsan Johor system,” he said, adding that the census will be done online.
He added that the data on poverty available to the state government was obtained from the e-Kasih system, the Johor Islamic Religious Council and the Welfare Department.
“However, each department has different guidelines when it comes to poverty,” he said, adding that the state government is working on improving the efficiency and coordination of its data.
He said this to questions about its data collection and the Ihsan Johor cash handout programme during the state assembly sitting yesterday.
The questions were put forth by Tan Chen Choon (PH-Jementah), Liow Cai Tung (PH-Johor Jaya), Gan Peck Cheng (PH-Penggaram), Raven Kumar (BN-Tenggaroh) and Abd Taib Abu Bakar (BN-Machap).
On the Ihsan Johor cash handout programme, which was launched in March to help those affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, Hasni said the state government has approved the applications of 41,565 individuals.
He said the state government received 234,105 applications between April and June this year, with 82.25% of them being rejected.
“Among the reasons for rejection are having an income that exceeds the eligibility for the aid, age factor (under 18), the applicant has a company, duplication in application, and non-existent identity card number.
“From the 41,565 applications that have been approved, 38,334 received RM250 in cash assistance each while 3,231 received RM500 each,” he said.
Hasni added that for recipients who do not have a bank account, the aid was given to them in cash.
Meanwhile, it was revealed at the state assembly yesterday that the closure of international borders due to the Covid-19 pandemic has caused the state to suffer a decline of RM5.74bil in investment this year compared to last year.
Datuk Mohd Izhar Ahmad, who is in charge of investment, cooperatives, entrepreneurship development and human resource in the state exco, said that between January and September, the state government received RM5.71bil in investment from the manufacturing and industrial sector.
“Of the amount, RM3.39bil is from foreign investment and RM2.32bil from domestic investment.
“In comparison, last year we received RM11.45bil in investment for the sector with about RM6.53bil from foreign investment and RM4.91bil from domestic investment,” he said in response to questions from Datuk Sharifah Azizah (BN-Penawar) and Ee Chin Li (PH-Tangkak) about the investments received in 2019 and 2020.
Izhar said the sector that saw the most significant drop was the petroleum and petro-chemical sector with a decline of RM2.18bil.