Steven Sim | RM5,900 income a month – we know it’s not true
People say politicians often tell lies. But really more often than not, they actually give us statistics. What is the difference? I'll let Mark Twain tell you: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics”.
The latest statistics our government proudly brandish at us is the report that household income in Malaysia has surpassed RM5,900 a month. This was presented by Abdul Wahid Omar, the former boss of Maybank, who has been roped into Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s Cabinet as “Economy Minister”.
Intuitively, most Malaysians know it’s a farce. Why? Because many families we know, maybe including our own, earn much lesser than RM5,900 a month.
Because even the government itself proudly claimed that its cash transfer programme BR1M has benefited 80 percent of Malaysian households. The only condition for BR1M is that a recipient household must earn less than RM3,000 a month.
As recently as September 2013, the government announced that 82.5 percent of young Malaysians below the age of 30 earn below RM3,000 a month. These constitute more than one third of the workers in Malaysia.
Full story: http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/274095
