Priority is reducing hardcore poverty, not meeting deadlines, says Masidi

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah is prioritising efforts to effectively reduce the number of hardcore poor families rather than scrambling to meet the July timeline to end hardcore poverty in the state.

State Finance Minister Datuk Seri Masidi Manjun said hardcore poverty eradication initiatives were among the main points of discussion in the state Cabinet’s weekly meeting previously as the state maps its strategy and methods for this purpose.

He pointed out, however, that the state considers the timeline, which was given by the Prime Minister, as motivation to strive better to curtail poverty instead of a deadline.

“We did not choose the timeline, but for us it is a challenge to be more diligent,” Masidi said after witnessing an anti-corruption event involving the Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd (SESB) on Monday (June 10).

“I know the intention of the Prime Minister is for all the government agencies to work harder to weed out poverty.

“To my interpretation, the timeline is merely a sense of urgency expressed by the PM for all heads of government departments to take this matter seriously.

“So, the question of us meeting the target or not is not as important as the efforts that must be doubled to ensure we arrive at our ultimate aim, which is to totally wipe out hardcore poverty,” he added.

Masidi said the state was focusing more on sustainable ways to overcome extreme poverty in the future.

“A host of strategies and methods have been and will be introduced to help cut down the number of those under the hardcore poverty bracket,” he said.

In his speech when closing the Kaamatan festival last month, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim set the end of July as the deadline to end hardcore poverty in Sabah.

Anwar also said he was confident that the issue could be resolved as the number of heads of households in the hardcore poor category in Sabah had dropped to just 9,000 from 20,000 previously.

Following that, Masidi had then said Sabah’s actual hardcore poverty numbers might not be as high as the official figures indicate because they appear to include those who are deceased.

He said the Sabah government needed to go through the statistics to determine the actual situation, adding that many others who did not qualify were also listed in the database.

He added that about 4,000 people who have died were still part of the statistics.