First payment of BR1M (now called BSH) to be made on Jan 28

(The Star) – The first phase of the Bantuan Sara Hidup (BSH), formerly known as BR1M (1Malaysia People’s Aid), payment for next year will be made on Jan 28, says the Finance Ministry.

The BSH payment, formerly known as BR1M (1Malaysia People’s Aid), would be made according to the names in the old database and will follow the previous procedure, said its minister Lim Guan Eng.

He said using the old database does mean that there is a big possibility that some of the recipients are actually ineligible for the aid, but that this must be done in order to facilitate payment before February next year.

Lim also said that after the first payment has been made, the database will then be updated to weed out ineligible participants who are not from the B40 income bracket, before subsequent BSH payments are done in the second and third phase.

“The updating process needs to be done for the payment of the second and third phase of BSH 2019. This is in line with the aim to improve this programme to be more targeted and dependent on household size.

“The payment criteria and new procedure will be announced in the nearest possible time,” said Lim in a statement on Wednesday (Dec 26).

He said BSH 2019 is expected to benefit 4.1 million households via the first phase of payment amounting to RM300 per household, involving an RM1.2bil allocation by the government.

“As announced in the Budget 2019 speech, the government will continue with the BSH programme in order to help ease the B40 group’s cost of living,” he said.

The payment will be credited straight to the recipients’ bank accounts.

BR1M was renamed to BSH when Pakatan Harapan took over Putrajaya after the May 9 general election.