Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Guan Eng: Penang has eradicated hardcore poverty

After a long spell, finally - a headline that made me happy.

Poverty has always been the Achilles' heel of Malaysia. Where most known population of Malaysia has been enjoying modern infrastructures, good paying jobs, donuts and Ikeas, it's always mind-boggling that even after 52years of political and economic stability, we still have fellow Malaysians living without electric and water supply. On that point, our leaders, no matter how smart they were or how well they've turned this country to being acceptably successful, have greatly failed.

When all around we hear billion dollar projects that will inherently make the rich richer, we rarely hear talks of genuine efforts to eradicate poverty. Until yesterday, that is.

Just after a year in power, the Penang State Goverment has boldly announced that they have devised a mechanism to eliminate hardcore poverty. And to much praise, it was learnt that this has always been one of their topmost agenda when they came in power. I guess, being freshmen, they are fundamentally strong over the objective of a goverment. Something that probably BN has forgotten, eh?

Guan Eng, fitting to his stature, said something smart too:
Even though it is difficult (on eradicating poverty), including facing bankruptcy, I am more willing to have the state becoming bankrupt to help the poor and be burdened than to be bankrupted by corruption."

This is Mandela stuff. Anyway, if you're wondering how the mechanism works, here are some links.

The Sun Newspaper
The Malaysia Insider

1 comment:

yusaini said...

every country ada orang miskin nih. bukan gomen that country tak bole buat program utk naik taraf tapi saja tak mau sebab bila miskin that country gomen bole bagi subsidi. bila dapat subsidi akan terus pangkah that country gomen. modenize slavery.