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The poverty levels shown by the PM Departments EPU Report and the UNICEF Report only reaffirms what everyone else in Sabah knows except the ruling Umno/BN government and their Umno/BN leaders. The Sabah government and their Ministers should now accept their failures in failing to tackle the poverty problem in Sabah and face the problem head-on. They should not wait for another child student to commit suicide, pray that such tragedy do not recur, before taking action. The Sabah and federal governments should open their hearts and minds and adopt a new and fresh holistic approach and come up with an entirely new and comprehensive plan to tackle poverty in Sabah. They should no longer use this poverty problem to keep the people poor so as to achieve their political goals. To tackle the poverty problem whole-heartedly, they should invite people across the political divide including the opposition members to form a bi-partisan State Assembly Select Committee to help formulate the new comprehensive plan and to oversee the government programs to resolve the poverty problems in Sabah.
PUTRAJAYA - Sabah and Kelantan recorded the highest number of poor and undernourished children, a statistical profile by United Nations Childrens Fund (Unicef) on Malaysian children showed. The profile which was released today showed that Sabah and Kelantan topped the chart in the percentage of children living in poverty, at 31% and 15% respectively. The proportion is in stark contrast with the national statistic, which stood at 9% and states like Selangor, Negeri Sembilan and Johor where only 2%-4% of their children were poor. The two states also ranked second and third with about 7% of their children being under-nourished, according to the 2010 statistics. The national rate was about 4.6% but in Sarawak, the proportion is as high as 10.1%. We call for urgent protective measures to address the issue, said Unicef official Roumiana Gantcheva, who was in-charged of drafting the report. The report revealed the dire need for qualified doctor in Labuan, Sabah, Sarawak and Kelantan. In 2010, every one doctor in Sabah had to serve 532 children below 15 years old, and every one of that in Kelantan had to serve 501 children. In comparison, every doctor in Kuala Lumpur was serving 78
children only. Kelantan and Labuan also registered the highest number of children mortality rate, at 12.2% and 12.1% respectively. The risk of a new-born child in Kelantan to die before reaching the age of 5 years old is twice higher than the risk of a new-born in Kuala Lumpur. The risk of a Malay new-born to die before reaching the age of one year old is twice as high as the risk of a Chinese new-born, it stated. The report, however, failed to shed lights on the reason behind the two states poor performance in children rights, as Roumiana said further analysis on the data is required.