Day Six, 9th of May, 2006, Sabah Poverty Research

Internal meeting with UPEN officers.


Visit and have an interview with Dato Ismail Bin Haji Wadin, the Chief of JPPS (Federal Ministry of Rural Development?). He seemed to have the most elaborated comprehensive data on the poor and hard core poor family households in Sabah. He made his strategy report based on the data of the Economic Planning Unit (EPU), the PM`s office. He presented his report but he did not seem to share his report with the State government. He has data on remote area, fishers, agriculture workers, the elderly and handicapped poor. He seemed to have differerent strategy targeting different groups but he did not want to show them to us. Anyway it was very encouraging to find a person like him. JPPS has the fund from the Federal through the State Governemnt. They have various ideas but only those chosen by the State Government would be implemented. He emphasised the role of the State government, in particular in impletation.
After having an interview we had a brief internal meeting with Zul, Cony, the replacement of Zul from Thursday, Dr Iguchi, Prof. Ogata. Various matters such as schedule, data and the arrangement of the visit to Pitas. We are going to Pitas, the poorest area in Sabah tomorrows. According to the data, more than half of the whole population of the Pitas are in hard core poverty. I really want to see the real situation.
In the afternoon, Prof. Ogata and I went to the Statistics Office and bought a lot of statistical materials. I hope those materials are helpful for us to understand the situation and make our proposal.