A MINISTER from Sabah, Wilfred Madius Tangau, said Prime Minister Najib Razak should be praised for slashing the state’s poverty rate from 19% in 2009 to 2.9% now.

The science and technology minister said Najib had done “magic” by implementing the first minimum wage order in 2012 that raised salaries to RM800 a month for Sabah and Sarawak.

“Poverty went down to 2.9%. That’s under 5%. Wow! That is almost zero poverty. That’s a tremendous achievement.

“Is it fake or magic? Yes, its Najib. He did the magic. A magic no other prime minister has ever done before,” Madius said before 300 heads of departments from various agencies at a seminar on remote sensing technology in Kota Kinabalu today.

Madius was elaborating on the use of remote sensing technology in security, agriculture, forest conservation and security when he side-tracked over his compliment to the prime minister.

“And how did he do it?” he asked. “This is when he implemented the minimum wage order in 2012.”  

Najib became prime minister in 2009.

According to Tangau, Sabahans were earning around RM300 to RM400 a month before a minimum wage was first introduced five years ago.

The current minimum wage for Sabah and Sarawak is RM920 and RM1,000 for peninsula after another order in 2016.

“Millions of people in Malaysia were taken out of poverty with a single stroke of the policy. No other prime minister has done this before. And it is a huge service for us,” said Madius, adding that he was not able to understand why there were still those who disliked the prime minister.

He said poverty in Sabah would be further reduced with the adoption of remote sensing technology in agriculture and fisheries.

For example, he said, Mosti had developed the MyCuaca app which fishermen and farmers could use to predict whenever bad weather and the MyIkan app which helped fishermen find areas at sea with better catch. – November 20, 2017.