PARLIAMENT | There are no poor households in Johor and Putrajaya, at least according to official definitions of poverty.
Likewise, poverty is almost eradicated in Kuala Lumpur, with only 0.1 percent of KL-ites considered poor, in 2014.
This is according to a written parliamentary reply to Kashturi Patto (DAP-Batu Kawan), who asked for incidences of poverty according to ethnicity and states from 2008 to today.
Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Abdul Wahid Omar responded by providing figures from 2007 to 2014, according to the latest published data by the Department of Statistics.
The poverty line in Peninsular Malaysia is RM760, and RM1,050 in Sabah and RM910 in Sarawak.
Households with a monthly income of less than RM460 in Peninsular Malaysia, less than RM630 in Sabah and less than RM590 in Sarawak.
“As poverty is no longer a main issue, focus is now placed on supporting the bottom 40 percent income earners (B40) in line with the government’s vision to reach development and high income status by 2020,” Abdul Wahid said.
He said this included encouraging the use of information and communication technology, ensuring higher enrolment in tertiary education of those from the B40 households and providing loans to businesses run by those from B40 households.
Social safety net
The government also aims to ease cost of living through monitoring against profiteering among traders of consumer goods, providing low-interest loans for affordable housing and expanding the social safety net, he said.
Sabah (including the Federal Territory of Labuan) has the highest incidence of poverty, at 3.9 percent in 2014.
However, this is an improvement from a whopping 19.2 percent in 2009. This meant that one in five Sabahans lived below the poverty line that year.
In Peninsular Malaysia, Kelantan has the highest incidence of poverty at 0.9 percent in 2014, dramatically lower than five years before that when 9.2 percent of its population was poor.
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