Government Committed To Eradicating Poverty

BUTTERWORTH, Feb 27 (Bernama) -- The Federal government remains committed to poverty eradication in its development strategy, Director-General of the Implementation Coordination Unit of the Prime Minister's Department Tan Sri Khalid Ramli said Friday.
Khalid said the introduction of the 'e-kasih' data bank was an important tool for strategic planning, implementation and monitoring of programmes to eradicate poverty, particularly hardcore poverty.
"The system is not only used as a databank but also to monitor the poverty status in all states online," he said after opening the Federal Development Office for Seberang Perai here.
He said the government had also embarked on the Poverty Mapping Programme to to identify marginalised areas and redirect infrastructure and services according to the needs of the poor.
"I hope that all the poor families will register under the e-kasih programme to enable the government to check and verify them under the poor group," he said, adding that the Poverty Mapping programme would be integrated with the 'e-kasih' system upon completion.
However, he said, the government agencies had to work closely with other stakeholders in tackling poverty, particularly urban poverty, given its multi-faceted nature.
He said there were certain criteria to identify individuals who were eligible for assistance, mainly children, single mothers, senior citizens, the disabled as well as the poor, to enable them to secure a decent quality of life.
The verification would be done by the statistics department, he added.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, when launching the Malaysia Social Safety Net programme specially to assist the poor earlier this week, was quoted as saying that the number of poor people had increased over the years due to the global economic crisis.

tunku : there is one cm, name guan eng, promised that there will be no more(zero) hardcore poverty in penang within a year from march 08. the figure has not decrease but instead keep increasing.this man doesn't walk his talk at all.he gave a stupid excuse that they can't open up a trustee account for donors to make their contribution.what rubbish. i thought he has a good way for eradicating hardcore poverty but he is depending for donors ( sedekah). very sad that is the mentality and capability of a cm who act smart but actually is brainless.don't talk big next time and promises moon and stars.