The cycle of despair
By Ken Vin Lek and G Vinod, Free Malaysia Today
PETALING JAYA: With 10 years to go before Malaysia becomes a developed nation, life for the urban poor has remained the same as it was when Dr Mahathir Mohamad announced Vision 2020 nearly 20 years ago.
They continue to struggle for their daily bread and to suffer the heartbreak of knowing that life will not get any better for their children because there is not enough money to educate them.
A FMT team recently did a Najib-style walkabout of Petaling Jaya to see how differently the poor and the rich lived and to talk to some from each group.
The story of a factory worker can serve as the typical narrative of a poor urban dweller. Having little or no education, he could not choose his job; the job chose him. He started in 1981 with a salary of RM200. A couple of years later, he got married, and soon the children started coming until there were four.
Now, 30 years later, the salary has about tripled—to RM650. He has no savings after working hard all of his adult life. There is a hefty bill for his recent heart bypass surgery and he has no idea how to find the money to settle it. He cannot depend on his children; they have not been able to find jobs because of their limited education.
Amalina Sufian, 21 years old and an employee of a local convenience store, has had no chance to pursue a tertiary education because she needs to make a living. She now earns RM800 a month, more than a third of which goes to groceries.
On the other hand, Nathan Periasamy, 20-years-old and the son of a wealthy businessman, is pursuing medicine at a prestigious university in Britain. He has never had to sweat it out for money. His father pays for his expenses, which sometimes amount to RM3,000 a month.
Amalina and Nathan studied equally hard in school. The difference is that Amalina had no money and was therefore deprived of the opportunities open to Nathan.
Over the years, our government has been announcing consistent increases in our per capita GDP and congratulating itself. The current figure is RM24,661. But FMT talked to taxi drivers, hawkers and security guards in Petaling Jaya Selatan and found that they make hardly a third of that amount.
Surprisingly, in 2009, the United Nations Development Programme reported that the incidence of poverty in Malaysia stood at an estimated 3.8 percent.
The government sets the poverty line at RM500 per month for a family of four. Anyone who knows anything about the cost of living knows that this is outrageously unrealistic. The rental for a three-room apartment in the poorer sections of Petaling Jaya, for instance, can be as high RM1,000 a month. That is about 60 percent of the monthly income of many of the residents interviewed by FMT.
