By Jayanath Appudurai

ACCORDING to the Government Transformation Programme [GTP] Annual Report released on 27 March 2011, there are only “108 extreme poor households” left. The GTP within a span of 12 months transformed the lives of 44,535 extreme poor households. {See Chart}

To say the least, this is a stupendous achievement! An intractable problem that the nation has been grappling with for more than 40 years has ostensibly been solved in 1 year!

Should not the Government be lauded for this?

Guess, it all depends on how ‘extreme poor’ is defined?

The GTP’s definition is as shown below:

Simply put, a given household (average 4.5 persons) with a monthly income of RM 441 [Peninsular]; RM 541 [Sabah] and RM521 [Sarawak] will NOT be classified as “Extreme Poor”!

Guess if you use a very, very low benchmark to measure poverty [or for that matter anything], success can be acclaimed overnight!

Voila!! - there you have it – “Blue Ocean” strategic thinking at its best!

Now, you can decide to send “congratulatory” messages to Putrajaya…….or something else!

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Shen Tneoh  - Not very honest |2011-03-29 11:25:39 hock:' title=' :s hock:' class='postemoticon' /> Only 108 in the very poor. What I understand 45% people in Malaysia make do with RM1500 per month or less. The Mentris should try living one month on RM1500.

Anonymous |2011-03-29 12:12:52 :idea: What a brilliant Government we have! Should export ALL OF THEM to Africa to erase poverty there.

Ramachandran  - Statistician |2011-03-29 12:49:13 hock:' title=' :s hock:' class='postemoticon' /> Why the poverty of 108 could not resolved, when the country's GDP is growing at 5% or RM30 billion being added value each year for annual GDP RM600 billion, at least! What is "blue ocean" in this? When the country gained independence, nurtrition approch or "amount of calories needed per capita" could be an appropriate measure to measure poverty. But, today it is not absolute poverty but "relative poverty" and needed minimum expenditure approach to depict what should be the minimum income needed to manage a "typical household" of size 4.5! Even then, poor households tend to have bigger household size! Measure of deprivation is needed! How many are qualified but could not get access to education, health services, transportation services, communication services..?

Philip Chong  - 108 left?? |2011-03-29 13:55:51 :confused: Tipu!! Go and check lembah pantai and I believe it is more than 108!!

Zamell  - Hmm |2011-03-29 16:58:59 :pinch: betol ke? Huh! i shared this on my blog ya..

Anonymous |2011-03-29 21:08:22 whats the issue here? how do you know those 40k ppl dont receive any help? how do you know if poor also dont receive any help? by having this type of identification, more focus can be given on extreme poor. Move extreme poor to poor. Move poor to low income and so on.

Thankful |2011-04-01 16:44:29 The hardcore or extreme poor is defined by Unesco, and that figure didn't come up out of the blue. The amt is as per what is dictated by the PLI (poverty lineincome) and amt required to bring in the right amt of calories. It's not blue ocean dude. It's facts. Jangan main belasah aje and criticize for the sake of criticizing.

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