Chong: Sarawak a rich state, with poor people’

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Chong Chieng Jen

KUCHING: Sarawak is ranked third in having the highest number of poor families among all the states in Malaysia, despite Sarawak government’s reserves of RM31 billion, says Stampin MP and Democratic Action Party (DAP) Sarawak chairman Chong Chieng Jen.

In highlighting the data from the latest report by the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM), he said Sarawak is ‘a rich state with poor people’.

Referring to the Household Income and Basic Amenities Survey Report 2019 released by the department on July 10, Chong pointed out that both the mean and median household incomes in Sarawak are way below the national averages.

The report also revealed that the national mean disposable household income is RM6,764 per month, while the mean disposable household income for Sarawak stands at RM5,218 per month – RM1,546 below the national figure per month.

For the median disposable household income, Sarawak registers RM3,994 per month – RM1,122 less than the national figure of RM5,116 per month.

“In terms of the poverty rate, Sarawak is much higher than the national figure. The incidence of families below the Poverty Line Income (PLI) of the whole nation in 2019 was 5.6 per cent, while the figure for Sarawak was nine per cent – a much higher rate of poverty.

“Sarawak has the third highest incidence of families under the PLI, after Sabah and Kelantan. Taking Sarawak’s population at 3.2 million in 2019 and the household size of 3.9 taken by the DOSM, that means that there are approximately 820,000 households in Sarawak and out of this number, 73,800 families live below the PLI (earning less than RM2,208 per month),” he said in a statement yesterday.

In this respect, Chong said it simply did not make sense that the Sarawak government had the highest amount of reserves among the states in Malaysia, yet there were many poor families with the state’s median disposable household income of only RM3,994.

In comparing the figures between two states with the highest median disposable household incomes – Selangor with at RM6,837 and Johor with RM5,516, he said the reserves of these state governments as at Dec 31, 2018 would stand at only RM3 billion for Johor, and RM2.1 billion for Selangor.

“These numbers are less than 10 per cent of Sarawak’s reserves of RM31 billion, yet they (the people of Johor and Selangor) are far richer and earn much higher incomes than us.

“There are only two possible explanations for such an anomaly of ‘rich state, poor people’. Firstly, despite the huge reserves, the Sarawak government is committed to too much debt that the reserves can no longer be liquidated to generate income for the people; and secondly, the state government has got its priority all wrong – instead of working to enrich the people, it is geared towards making its account look good.”

Chong stressed that Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Abang Johari Tun Openg, who is also the Finance Minister of Sarawak, had a duty to address and be accountable to the people of Sarawak.

“The recent few multi-billion projects announced by Abang Johari would exhaust the RM31 billion reserves in no time – namely the second trunk road, the coastal highway, the 5,000 telecommunications towers, the hydrogen bus project, the ART (Autonomous Rail Transit) project, the several airports proposed to be built by the state, the proposal to own an airline and the latest proposal to own a mobile Internet service provider company.

“Save for the construction sector, these projects seem to have no ostensible impact on the local small-medium enterprises (SMEs) and small traders.

“They will also not improve the median disposable household income of the great majority of Sarawakians.

“The government should move away from these mega projects and focus on helping the SMEs and small traders in Sarawak,” said Chong.