KOTA KINABALU: The Digital Native Agenda initiative (DNA23) will help boost efforts by government agencies to eradicate poverty in Sabah.
Parti Keadilan Rakyat president Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim said the digital technology application should be used by the poor, especially in rural areas, to market their products.
“For example, the Rungus people... they make beautiful handicraft from beads and through DNA23, it was made popular and even sold in Italy.
“This is what I mean about digital economy assisting the poor and not necessarily just for the rich,” he said during a dialogue on DNA23: The Challenges And Way Forward at Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS), here, last night.
Present were Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Christina Liew and UMS vice-chancellor Professor Datuk Dr Taufiq Yap Yun Hin.
As for the implementation of DNA23, he said the government should not have any issues as there was Internet coverage throughout the country.
On whether poverty in Sabah was due to neglect by the Federal Government, the Port Dickson member of parliament said it was more due to corrupt and selfish state leaders.
“For me, there is truth that Peninsular Malaysia treated Sabah as a ‘step sibling’, but there are many Sabah leaders who are corrupt and actually made the people of Sabah poorer.
“The focus should be to tackle corruption that leads to non-delivery of allocations to the poor in the state.”
Anwar, who is also the chairman of the Parliamentary Caucus on Reform and Governance, said the country’s poverty rate could be higher than 0.4 per cent as stated by the government.
He said economist Professor Jomo Kwame Sundaram had informed him that there were more people in the lowest household income group.
“When I asked the economist, he said there was no necessity to discuss B40 (40 per cent of the population in the lowest income group) as it was supposed to be B70.
“There are no villages (in this country) that have no poor people; it means the rate could be five or 10 per cent. It is similar in urban areas with a Chinese majority.”