ADDITIONAL RM7 BILLION ALLOCATION WELCOMED

Aliran welcomes the Cabinet’s approval of an additional allocation of RM7 billion for this year to stimulate the economy. It was announced that the government would identify projects for immediate implementation in the second half of 1998 and in 1999 to quicken the pace of recovery. The projects would involve agriculture, low- and medium-cost houses, amenities and education.

The additional allocation is exactly what Aliran called for (see Aliran Monthly Vol. 17 (11): 1997 and Vol. 18 (1): 1998) in the months immediately after the 1998 Budget was announced. We had called for additional spending to boost human development as well as our social and environmental capital, with increased allocations for food production, low-cost housing, education, health and social services, and reforestation.

The government must ensure that the extra RM7 billion is properly spent in the right areas. For instance, instead of privatising the ambulance service in government hospitals on the pretext of insufficient funds to maintain and upgrade the ambulances, the government should allocate a lot more funds to improve the entire state-run healthcare system. Such a move would benefit the poor in these difficult times and allow them easy access to healthcare services, a basic human right.

Facilities for schools should be improved - we have heard reports of how schools do not even have funds to pay their utility bills. Food subsidies and free textbooks for underprivileged pupils should be expanded.

More subsidies should be given to boost the construction of low-cost houses and to maintain their ceiling price at RM25,000. As it is, many low-income Malaysians cannot afford a RM25,000 house; what more, if the ceiling price is raised. The state should intervene in a big way and build tens of thousands of  low-cost houses - following the model of Singapore’s Housing Development Board - for poor Malaysians without passing this social responsibility to private developers who are only interested in their profit margins. This will give the construction industry - along with its supporting industries  - a much-needed life-line to come out of its present slump.

Finally, we earnestly hope that the additional allocation will not be used in any way that hints of a bailout of certain cronies or their related companies.

Anil Netto
Aliran Executive Committee
20 June 1998