KUALA LUMPUR: Eradicating poverty in the country seems to be an obvious undertaking of the government, but the approach and strategies may be in need of review.
Therefore, an expert has recommended promoting social mobility to introduce new and equitable opportunities for the poor to boost their income.
This was what Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS) senior fellow Dr Carmelo Ferlito said as he believed that trying to find an objective and sensible way to measure the country's poor was a noble but failing effort.
Indeed, we had seen how Economic Affairs Minister Rafizi Ramli struggled to defend the government's measurement methods after being questioned by Kinabatangan member of parliament Datuk Seri Bung Mohktar Radin on Wednesday (July 17).
According to Bung, hardcore poverty in Sabah, which stood at 6,937 out of 18,445 households nationwide in 2022, was an illogical figure as the state alone had an average population of 3.9 million.
Rafizi conceded that the issue at hand was not a fault of method, but a shortcoming of scale. It was one that the government aimed to resolve through granular efforts such as the Central Database Hub (PADU).
Nevertheless, Ferlito did not dismiss taking into account who among us deserved to be helped.
In fact, he pointed out that the broad measurements were already telling a troubling tale about the rural poor.
According to the Statistics Department (DoSM), between 2019 and 2020, poverty largely declined nationwide, but the situation in rural areas was highly variable, recording 33 per cent in relative poverty.
Measuring relative poverty did not rely on a household's ability to purchase food or essential items, but seeing whether their income fell below the national median, which according to DoSM, was RM2,600.
As such, while the government's commitment to eradicate hardcore poverty was seeing success, relative poverty remained a perpetual issue for many Malaysians.
According to Ferlito, it was more important to reform social pillars that could empower society than to give immediate aid to every impoverished household.
He believed that enhancing protection of property rights and expanding humanistic subjects in education (arts, history, literature, etc.) could spur entrepreneurship, which was an important tool to escape poverty.
Ferlito concluded that a free society in general was more likely to push through the boundary of poverty, as business-minded individuals would be free to take up opportunities to earn what they needed.