Therefore, if we can reduce urban poverty, we’ll also be able to reduce crime that has been rampant in Klang Valley. Experts found that crime rate is correlated with inequality and there have been over fifty studies showing tendencies for violence to be more common in societies where income differences are larger. This implies that we are facing with 1.3 million of urban poor. If we use RM1,500 as the threshold for poverty, according to the answer I get from the state government in the last sitting, there’ll be about 1.5 million people in Selangor live in poverty, 87.6% that is about 1.3 million of which live urban area. For other segments of the society, we’ll generate more benefits to them through free market by investing in items that generate economic multiplier effects, which I shall discuss later.Ī group of the bottom of the pyramid that I would like to draw your attention to is urban poverty. With that, for future subsidies and social programs, I call upon the government to ensure proper requirements are fixed (for example, income) on selecting the beneficiaries to ensure that we transfer wealth to the segments of the society that most need it. Nevertheless, I believe it will be unhealthy if we continue to run social programs on non-targeted subsidies, which will be less effective than targeted subsidies in achieving the goal of uplifting the bottom of the pyramid in the society with limited resources.

Program rumah mesra rakyat 2013