BLIND GOVERNMENT FOR ZERO POVERTY

By : UBF MEDIA

The United Borneo Front (UBF) is blaming the State Government’s lack of a strategic plan to solve the long standing problem of poverty in Sabah.

Its President, Datuk Dr. Jeffrey Kitingan said in a statement here that this lack of proper plan is because of a lackadaisical attitude of the state leaders.

“They are not serious nor committed to solve the problem. What they have been doing all these years is talk and make superficial and ad-hoc solutions, act only for the purpose of window dressing, without any system and they are doing it without any sense of urgency and commitment,” he said.

“To them it is just business as usual, so the problem will never be solved, and the longer the problem persists the worse it becomes.”

He opined that what the government has done so far is only gather statistics, and even the figures on poverty are conflicting each other. “If you can’t even gather reliable statistics on poverty how do you solve the root problem?” he asked.

He also believed that the e-Kasih and 1Azam programmes are not solving the problem but rather worsening the dependency syndrome in the long run.

“In fact the e-Kasih is being used as a political instrument to benefit mostly the Umno supporters, even those who do not qualify for the assistances,” he said.

“As such, the people’s view that it is all actually ‘pilih kasih’ (given in a preferential manner) is very true.”

“What the government needs to do is to take the bull by the horns and treat poverty as something extremely urgent,” he added.

“They must at least form a special task force especially to tackle poverty. They must establish an enabling mechanism which requires the people to internalize and adopt it as their own by which they will contribute to the solution,” he suggested.

“With this system the state government will need also to integrate a new economic model of sort in order to enable the programme to be effective and become result-oriented.”

“With this system the people will not move in individualistic isolation but are integrated into the system which would be part of the larger economic system,” he added.

“But the problem is even this may be difficult to formulate with the current mentality among the state leaders. If the leaders refuse to think, the people would also are unable to be creative.”

He said that the government approach in giving handouts as baits for political support is causing the people to become hostages to the political agenda.

“While they continue to receive handouts that do not offer long-term solutions, they become more and more dependant on the government,” he said.

“This is what the government wants, not have the people freed totally from the vicious cycle of poverty.”