Ipoh Barat MP M Kula Segaran has blasted the Perikatan Nasional government for practising double standards and for allowing political affiliations to get in the way of their decision-making process in the distribution of aid during the movement control order (MCO).
He said the B40 group in his constituency has not received food aid despite claims that it has been distributed to them.
He revealed that none of the purported 1,000 food baskets promised by the Women, Family and Community Development ministry reached any of the 1,500 families within the B40 who pleaded for help in his constituency.
He asked Putrajaya the reasons for the delay, saying Malaysia is entering the fourth phase of the movement control order (MCO) but the poor have yet to receive food aid.
Since April 2, Kula said, numerous attempts to reach out to the welfare authorities in Ipoh Barat had failed.
“When we finally managed to get connected to the Welfare Department in the Kinta district, we were told that all of the food items have been distributed. To whom were the food aid distributed to?” he asked in a statement today.
Kula said the aid may have been distributed to Umno, PAS and PPBM divisions and did not reach the “most vulnerable”.
“There are many families and children who are going to bed hungry every night during this extraordinary time,” the former human resources minister said.
He said this contradicted Women, Family and Community Development Minister Rina Harun’s statement that no one would be left out in the aid distribution.
“I ask all of us to put aside our political affiliations for a moment,” he said.
Kula said it was NGOs who have stepped in and reached out to at least 200 families so far.
He said they had been working with three NGOs tirelessly to prepare and distribute food but with limited financial resources and manpower, “the full extent of aid” could only come from Putrajaya.