THE one-size-fits-all funding allocation of RM300,000 per constituency as part of the government’s Pemulih programme will not be enough to help many Malaysians to overcome financial hardship during the pandemic, said Klang Valley lawmakers.

They said the problem is exacerbated because they have hundreds of thousands of people in their constituencies, they added.

“The Bangi constituency alone needs around 2,000 food baskets a month or 12,000 for the remaining six months, which means an allocation of RM1.2 million,” said MP Ong Kian Ming.

So, is RM300,000 adequate to cover my constituency? Obviously not.

“Especially when most urban constituencies in the Klang Valley have such a huge population,” he said.

According to the 45-year-old MP, there are approximately 1.2 million residents in the entire Hulu Langat district – which covers Ampang, Pandan, Hulu Langat and Bangi constituencies – based on the 2010 census.

“This number would have grown to almost 2 million in 10 years,” he said, taking into account migrant workers in industrial areas.

“My estimate is that there are 500,000 people in my constituency, but there are likely more,” said the former deputy minister for international trade and industry.

Bangi, which is the biggest constituency in terms of voters, had 178,959 registered voters in the 2018 elections. In contrast, the two smallest – Putrajaya and Labuan – only have 27,306 and 28,356 voters respectively.

Divided by the number of voters, Bangi’s food basked budget under Pemulih is merely RM1.67 per voter compared to RM10.98 and RM10.58 per voter in Putrajaya and Labuan respectively, making their value roughly 6.5 times greater than that of Bangi.

Setiwangsa’s Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad also doesn’t understand why the government is giving RM300,000 across the board to all constituencies when the number of constituents is vastly different.

“It is insufficient to cover the 10,000-15,000 households in my constituency,” Nik Nazmi, who had an electorate size of 72,000 in 2018.

“As we have to spend RM100 per food basket, we are bound to miss some households,” said the former Selangor assembly deputy speaker.

While the lockdown has forced people to lose their income, Nik Nazmi said the two-week enhanced movement control order (EMCO) shrouding the Klang Valley starting today just makes life worse.

“With the targeted EMCO, we will have problems distributing the food baskets as many volunteers will not be able to come in to help,” said the 39-year-old.

Flexibility

Segambut MP Hannah Yeoh said that food baskets were just temporary fixes.

“In June alone, we gave out 2,209 food baskets in Segambut. While the RM300,000 is not going to be enough for a whole year, we cannot be giving out food baskets every week.

“That is not the solution. Allowing people to work safely around Covid-19 is crucial. This food basket programme is only temporary relief, like a bandage to stop a gunshot wound,” said Yeoh.

Like Nik Nazmi, Yeoh is also concerned with the 13-item per basket and other conditions set by the government.

“At RM100 per basket, we can only hand out to 3,000 households,” said the former deputy minister for women, family and community development.

“A key issue in feeding is documentation, we must submit names and details. Also, they still can’t answer on whether foreigners can receive these baskets,” said Yeoh.

Meanwhile, Ong said although the government has not given any formal feedback on the specifications for food baskets, the talk is that there is some flexibility in determining what goes into the baskets.

“We await the formal feedback from the Selangor implementation co-ordination unit, but we cannot afford to wait, my office will start with the procurement of suitable goods for the baskets based on our own accumulated experience.

“For those families with special needs, eg, more milk powder for their children, we will provide accordingly,” said Ong.

While urban MPs suffer in terms of number of constituents, rural lawmakers such as Tg Malim’s Chang Lih Kang also said that the RM300,000 was not enough, but for another reason.

While Chang said he had one-third the number of voters as Ong, Chang said he has a higher percentage of people who need help, because rural voters generally earn less than their urban counterparts.

“There are 60 villages (traditional, new villages, Felda and Orang Asli). Even if we had to allocate 50 baskets for each village and 100 to the Orang Asli villages, that would work out to 7,000 baskets.

“This does not include the ones in the town areas,” said the PKR vice president.

Chang, who serves 65,000 voters, understands the RM100 per basket specification is only a guideline.

“It’s just a guideline of a maximum of RM100 per food basket. We’ll have to work with this,” said Chang. – July 3, 2021.