This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on August 31, 2020 - September 6, 2020

THE dwellers of Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) Projek Perumahan Rakyat (PPR) low-cost flats can hold their heads up a tad higher last week. Though they are among the most vulnerable in society in terms of income security, their spirit and determination to build a better life for themselves and their loved ones not only shone through in a study commissioned by two United Nations (UN) agencies but have been acknowledged by Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.

While cash transfers from the government were found to be the most helpful aid during the Movement Control Order (MCO) period, many PPR folks actually wanted assistance that would have a more lasting impact on their lives and livelihoods, according to the first instalment of the “Families on the Edge” study by United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and carried out in partnership with Malaysia-based public policy research outfit DM Analytics.

“The PPR residents are very resilient and they adapted well to the new normal despite the numerous challenges faced. While one-off cash handout helps, they prefer sustainable assistance that can enable them to earn income. They are not lazy, or indolent, but, rather, very resolute in trying to improve the well-being of their family,” says DM Analytics managing director Muhammed Abdul Khalid, who is the lead author of the report released on Aug 24.

“They also place importance on their children’s education. They are rational and honest, unlike some of our elites. The cash assistance received were not used for wasteful things such as cigarettes or alcohol but were, in fact, used to buy necessity items such as food,” Muhammed adds, relating how unemployed and furloughed respondents tried to supplement income with part-time jobs such as making Grab deliveries and selling goods online.

Muhyiddin, who paid a visit to the Desa Rejang PPR in Setapak (one of 16 PPRs surveyed for the report) before heading to parliament on Aug 25, posted on Facebook how proud he was to see many hardworking Malaysians, some even taking two to three jobs a day to build a better life — noting how many of the PPR folks ran small businesses, worked as taxi and lorry drivers and found various other ways to earn a living while faced with various constraints. Among other things, he mentioned how impressed he was by the perseverance and persistence of one Rosali Md Nasid — who receives Elaun Pekerja Cacat (EPC) but also supplements it with sewing jobs to support his wife Artinie and two children — despite being crippled in both hands and having a prosthetic right leg.

While the social media post noted (in Malay) that there are “various initiatives” by the Social Welfare Department (JKM), the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development, the Ministry of Federal Territories and the Ministry of Housing and Local Government to help the PPR folks, he added that “a lot more” can be done by the government to make sure that the PPR folks are not left behind, including improving activities at community centres to bolster their skills and entrepreneurship as well as the education of their children to better ensure their future well-being.

After learning more about the urban poor, Muhyiddin also asked the Economic Action Council (EAC) to hasten the drawing up of a holistic action plan to better equip and raise the standard of living for this segment of society “to build a better Malaysia”.

That is befitting given that the World Bank Malaysia Economic Monitor (June 2020) had noted that social assistance programmes in Malaysia lack coordination between social assistance, education and labour market programmes and have only a “modest impact on poverty reduction and on promoting productive employment”. It added that it was vital to improve the performance of the social protection system to ensure that it is integrated with the wider economic policy in the new normal post-Covid-19.

The World Bank researchers had not only found the level of benefits to be “generally insufficient to achieve a reduction in the poverty gap similar to that of the average upper middle-income and high-income countries”, there were also “few policies that link the beneficiaries of social assistance programmes to efforts to build their human capital or to improve their productive inclusion in the labour market”.

And the desire to be more equipped to earn a living and better stand on their own two feet was among key observations by researchers who interviewed the PPR folks for the UN report.

While there were also requests for an increase in the amount of cash assistance from the government, Muhammed says many PPR folks surveyed wanted things like equipment to start a burger stall, a place to sell goods or a micro loan to start their own business. “Cash handouts help, but one-off assistance is not sustainable. In particular, they want jobs.

“Covid-19 has exposed all sorts of vulnerabilities, difficulties and hardships faced by these households, especially those in the informal sector. Slightly more than half of the heads of households are not covered by EPF or Socso, which means that should they face income shock again, they will be in deep trouble,” Muhammed says, and urges a rethink of the employment-based social assistance programmes.

More than 52% heads of households surveyed did not have access to social protection under the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) or the Social Security Organisation (Socso), with the unprotected portion even higher at 57% among female-headed households, which include single mothers. Unemployment rates among female-headed PPR households were also found to be as high as 32% compared with 25% among the PPR folks surveyed — much higher than the national unemployment rate of 5.3% in May and 4.9% in June — proof that the low-income families in Kuala Lumpur particularly are being badly affected by the Covid-19 crisis.

The PPR folks’ total monthly median income also fell by about one-third to RM1,000 on average in June this year, compared with the average of RM1,500 in December 2019, even though only 31% of heads of households surveyed said their working hours were reduced during the MCO, the study shows.

“We should and must spend more. We can afford it. We are too stingy. We must never consider assistance to the vulnerable group as cost, but rather as investment. It is much costlier to not help in the long run, not to mention, [it is] morally wrong too,” he adds, reiterating the significance of aid that can have more sustainable impact, not just on human capital but also nutritional health and support for physical and mental well-being of the people.

The first instalment of the study that seeks to offer critical insights for policymaking to mitigate the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on vulnerable groups also found the need to counter the potential impact of malnutrition among low-income households due to the lower-quality food consumed. Some 52% of respondents said they increased the consumption of eggs, the cheapest source of protein, while 40% said they increased their consumption of instant noodles during the MCO. Muhammed said this was purely due to cost and not because eggs and instant noodles were relatively easier to obtain versus fruit and meat.

A total of 500 heads of households were interviewed between May 27 and June 8 for the socio-economic portion of the report. The sample was selected from 16 of 56 PPR flats housing 61,713 households in Kuala Lumpur that Muhammed said was “representative of the households in low-cost flats in Kuala Lumpur”.

And among the 500, 30 participants — 40% were single mothers and 23% were households with at least one person with disabilities — whose household members total 174 (5.8 persons on average), were interviewed between May 27 and June 2 for the general well-being portion as the researchers wanted to “go deeper on the issues raised by those 500 respondents”.

About 89% of the PPR households surveyed received Bantuan Prihatin Nasional (BPN) cash assistance, 67% obtained rent exemption, 58% took up i-Lestari and 32% obtained loan moratoriums from banks.

The researchers did not ask why 11% of the households did not receive BPN but Muhammed said it was “highly likely” that they had not been captured in the system and not because they were not qualified.

Despite the aid, 74% of the BPN recipients said they were unable to save money during the MCO and among those who were able to do so, half of them said the money could not last a month and only one in six had enough savings to last more than three months. Muhammed also noted how some had to even sell their phone, which is an essential item, and said they had “nothing to pawn anymore”.

“There is a need to widen the employment protection for the self-employed and those in the informal sector, that is, Makcik Kiah … Nutritional food and e-learning must be available to all kids. School meal programmes, which were expanded in 2018/19, must be continued and scaled up. [We need to] spend on the vulnerable group, especially children, the elderly and disabled,” he said, noting that one in four (26%) of the 500 households have at least one member who is disabled or has a chronic illness. Only eight in 10 children use online learning but two in five (42%) have insufficient equipment — 56% in female-headed households — and 36% complained of having “no internet” connection.

Stephen Barrett, Unicef Malaysia’s chief of social policy, told reporters last Monday that some of the research findings had been communicated to the government as part of ongoing stakeholder engagements as well as consultations for Budget 2021.

UNFPA representative Marcela Suazo, who has spent three years in Malaysia, also paid tribute to “the resilience and dignity of these [PPR] families, many of whom expressed their strong desire to rebuild their livelihoods” and called for “more sustained support targeting the women and children who need it the most”.

According to Muhammed, the second instalment of the survey will begin this week and he reckons that conditions “should improve”, given that the MCO has been relaxed. “It would be interesting to see if there are improvements for these families, especially in terms of employment,” he says, adding that more detailed data will be collected in the coming survey, including a breakdown of income source, school attendance and employment status of each household member, including school-age children, if any.

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