Program Mesra Rakyat Satu Malaysia, A Community Outreach Program

At the registration counter in Lunas, Kulim

The SITF organized a series of meet the people sessions at six neighborhoods around the country. This program was organized as a response to many complaints from the grassroots that they are unable to access public sector services at the district level.

SITF mobilized the agencies who are members of the Taskforce together with local community leaders to reach out to the grassroots. The response was overwhelming as about 9, 400 people gathered at the six locations. Ordinary people are coming out in large numbers to access the services. There is also a clear indication that there is confidence among the people to access services provided by the Federal agencies.

At the same time it indicates that there are delivery issues in which ordinary people especially the poor and low income are having difficulties at the front desk counters

A total of 4, 948 cases were received as indicated in the Table 1.

Table 1 Participants & cases received at Program Mesra Rakyat

Dates	Location of Mesra Rakyat	Estimate Totals	Total cases received
15.08.2010	Ijok, Kuala Selangor	650	404
25.09.2010	Lunas, Kulim	3000	1532
3.10.2010	Sg Pelek, Sepang	1000	742
16.10.2010	Perai	2500	1062
23.10.2010	Batu Anam, Segamat	250	134
30.10.2010	Sungai Siput, Kuala Kangsar	2000	1074
Totals		9,400	4,948

Analysis of the Social cases

A simple analysis of the cases revel that a sizable number of social needs are related to poverty and low income aspects. The highest request is for welfare assistance as indicated by 45.2% or 2,236 of the applicants. This is almost half of the people who came to the six programs.

The second highest is workers claims pertaining to SOSCO which amount to 14.2% of the cases. The third is regarding documentation such as birth certificate registration, securing an identification card or application for citizenship. In one sense a person who do not possess basic documents can be regarded as the ‘poorest among the poor’ as they will not be able to access any of the basic services. These request accounted for 13.3% of the total. Details pertaining to all cases can be found in Table 2

Table 2 : Cases received by agencies & needs

Agencies	Areas of need	Total cases
Department of Social Welfare	Welfare	2236 (45.2%)
SOSCO	Work related claims	698 (14.1%)
Department of Registration	Documentation	658 (13.3%)
Jobs Malaysia	Employment	395 (8.0%)
ICU	Poverty registration	378 (7.6%)
TEKUN	Micro loans	344 (7.0%)
Public Complaints Bureau	Complaints	143 (2.9%)
AIM	Micro loans	51 (1.0%)
Industrial Training Institute (ILP)	Skills Training	45 (0.9%)
Total cases		4,948 (100%)

Agency officers handling cases in Sg Pilek

The SITF program has flushed out many grassroots problems faced by the poor and low income people especially in their encounter with front desk officers at the district level. In the long run these counter services must be improved as well as the Indian community must be more confident to go to the relevant agencies and make their request known. A number of reasons can be cited for their inability to access related to communicational issues. This requires cultural sensitivity as well as officers who can communicate in Tamil. The other major hurdle is the bureaucracy and the requirement to fill many different sets of forms. Distance of the government office from the neighborhoods due to transport problems and cost is another hurdle.

However we all recognized that through these meet the people sessions, the grassroots came in direct personal contact with federal agency officers who were very helpful and who devoted time during the weekend breaks to service the special needs of the Indian community.