GUA MUSANG: The Temiar orang asli tribe in Kampung Jedip here are wondering if they are eligible to apply for the recently-launched e-Tunai Rakyat cashless initiative.
Many from the indigenous community claimed that they have little information on the programme and were not informed by relevant authorities.
Village head Adun Sayang said he only knew about e-Tunai Rakyat after watching the television recently.
“I knew about that (e-Tunai Rakyat) and the RM30 amount which will be transferred (to the e-wallet) to us. But it did not say properly whether the orang asli can also apply for it.
“Of course we are happy if we can apply for it. We can use the money to buy daily items,” said the 67-year-old father of seven.
Odd-job worker Mohamad Nasri Hasan,25, said a majority of the orang asli people have no smartphones to enable them to utilise the incentive.
“If possible, we will like the government especially the finance ministry to consider a new method to assist those who have no smartphones,” said the father of a two-year-old boy.
Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng was reported to have said yesterday that the government is prepared to review the disbursement of e-Tunai Rakyat to bank accounts of living aid recipients who do not own smartphones.
He said there have yet to be complaints stemming from the matter since the launch of the e-Tunai initiative last Tuesday, which saw qualified e-wallet users of various applications each claiming RM30 as an incentive from the government.
To date, Lim said that a total of 1.7 million applications had been made to claim the RM30 since the cashless initiative was launched and about 1.32 million of the applications have been approved involving almost RM40 million.
He reiterated that the initiative was introduced to promote cashless transactions.