Lembah Pantai MP Nurul Izzah Anwar has taken Women, Family and Community Development Minister Rohani Abdul Karim to task for suggesting that Malaysian generosity was a cause for homelessness in the country.

"I wonder why the authorities are keen to blame others for all the country's and rakyat's ills.

"Local and overseas research has shown poverty in Malaysia is a result of policies that cause hardships to the rakyat," she said in a statement today.

Nurul was referring to an article by  The Malay Mail  on Tuesday which reported Rohani (l eft ) lamenting that the public's generosity had contributed to a rise in beggars and the homeless.

She reportedly had said that it was not an offence for NGOs to hand out out food to the less fortunate but had urged them to use the "proper" channels.

Responding to this, Nurul said it was no different from the federal government dishing out the Bantuan Rakyat 1Malaysia payment to households with under RM3,000 income.

"If NGOs who give out food were to be blamed, then the government, too, should be blamed for encouraging recipients of handouts to stay poor by showering them with such aid," said Nurul.

'Bad policies breed poverty'

Reiterating that the problem was due to government policies, Nurul cited research by Universiti Malaya's Centre for Poverty and Development Studies which warned that the bumiputera community will be hardest hit by subsidy cuts and could potentially return the country to poverty levels of the 1970s.

"As a result of fuel subsidy cuts, it found 37.5 percent of urban bumiputera and 23.3 percent of rural bumiputera are at risk of becoming hardcore poor," said Nurul.

She also said that if these people were to meet an unexpected disaster or lose a breadwinner in the family, they will likely slip into hardcore poverty.

She added that a 2010 Bank of America Merrill Lynch report had also warned Malaysia will be "young and poor" by 2030 as the country's wealth growth cannot keep up with population growth.

"I hope the authorities will reflect on themselves before blaming others for this problem.

"Poverty is a complex issue and requires a comprehensive solution, be it to address the symptoms like what the NGOs are doing or resolving the causes from government policies," she said.

She added that Malaysia's measurement of poverty was outdated as it primarily focuses on income without considering other factors and urged the government to adopt the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI).

The MPI, developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative and the United Nations Development Programme, goes beyond income and considers other indicators such as health, education and living standards to measure poverty.