‘Vital to ensure no one slips through the cracks’

PETALING JAYA: Putrajaya must find ways to ensure deserving aid recipients do not slip through the cracks under the Padu system, say economic experts.

There must be ways to catch “errors of omissions” and “errors of inclusion”, where there will be some who are qualified but excluded – whereas there will be those who are not qualified but they are mistakenly included, said economist Datuk Dr Madeline Berma of the Academy of Sciences Malaysia.

“As for the near real-time aspect, there is the question of the honesty of Malaysians to update the data.

“Should you be unemployed today and getting subsidies, would you update your data of getting employment at the expense of forgoing your subsidies six months later?

“While it all looks good and fine on paper, data must not be allowed to rule and human elements should not be disregarded.

“The data must be used to facilitate and expedite but not to be rule-all,” said Berma, who also called on the government to make full use of the community arms such as NGOs to ensure that no one falls through the gaps.

Malaysian Inclusive Development and Advancement Institute, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia director Tan Sri Noor Azlan Ghazali said that when it comes to such a database, purpose matters.

“Errors will always be there. It is best to define the accepted level of error and quickly get to fixing problems.

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“Is there a need to go to the individual level? Is ground targetting sufficient?

“Weigh the costs and the gains,” said Noor Azlan.

Economics expert Prof Dr Chung Tin Fah of HELP University also said having a central database is laudable but pointed out that there is always a problem of how reliable the data can be.

He said this is due to the possibility of certain groups such as those living in remote geographical locations and those outside the scope of coverage such as informal sector workers being omitted from the database.

He said the government must focus on the inclusion of such groups in order to enhance data reliability.

Economics expert Prof Dr Geoffrey Williams of the Malaysia University of Science Technology (MUST) said everyone has an incentive to help make it work by updating their data quickly and accurately in the Padu central database.

“If they are dishonest, there should be swift penalties. This will make sure people provide accurate data and keep it updated,” he said.