Poverty – Warisan takes CM to task

 
KOTA KINABALU: Parti Warisan Sabah has taken to task the Chief Minister of Sabah, Hajiji Mohd Noor over his inaction with the State’s socioeconomic and poverty datas released by the Federal Government middle of last year.
 
The party’s Women’s Chief, Norfaizah Chua said the revelation by the Economic Minister, Rafizi Ramli during the last Dewan Rakyat sitting that 8 districts in Sabah are listed as the nation’s poorest should had not came as a surprise to Hajiji.
 
“Warisan JPRN unit noted that the Minister (Rafizi) cited Sabah’s Household Income Survey (HIS) and Household Expenditure Survey (HES) 2022 Reports during the sitting on 14 March in the Dewan Rakyat.
 
On 16 March at Tuaran, Hajiji subsequently denied the statistics given by the Minister and said datas obtained by the State Government is somewhat different.
 
Both the HIS and HES 2022 Reports cited by Rafizi were actually published by Ministry of Economy/Department of Statistic Malaysia (DOSM) in July 2023 together with two other important publications namely ‘Poverty in Malaysia 2022’ and ‘Sabah’s Socioeconomy Report 2022’ (published in August 2023).
 
As the Chief Minister of Sabah, it is crucial that Hajiji peruse these 4 reports because it provide detailed overview of the State’s socio-economic conditions and thereafter, to make the proper planning especially in terms of poverty alleviation.
 
But Hajiji denial of the statistics given by Rafizi tells us that these 4 reports have not been discussed for rectification and during the good 8 months (August 2023 to March 2024), Hajiji and his SMJ Secretariat should have engaged with DOSM/Ministry of Economy on the datas they think are correct.
 
Any rectification would then be reflected in the Minister’s explanations but nothing came out and it is amusing to see how quickly Hajiji and other GRS leaders now called for greater Federal-State cooperation to alleviate poverty in Sabah after the revelation was made,” she stated in a statement today.
 
Norfaizah also pointed out that that there is no way Hajiji and the SMJ Secretariat have missed the reports since GRS is represented in the Federal Cabinet by Armizan Mohd. Ali.
 
“It is the practice of Federal Government to print such reports and to give it to the Federal Ministries and JPRN will be very surprise if Armizan never got his copies more so since he was the Minister for Sabah and Sarawak at that material time.
 
If JPRN, that has no direct access either to the Federal or State Government, managed to get all 4 copies by November last year, then we expect the Chief Minister and his SMJ Secretariat who are currently enjoying tens of thousands ringgit a month in salaries deriving from the taxpayers monies to do much better.
 
Even the Wira Warisan through its Information Chief had issued his statement as early as January this year on the absolute poverty incidences at Sipitang and Tuaran so why Hajiji is now denying the figures given by Rafizi?” she concluded.