The UMNO 1 Malay-sian Prime Minister Najib Razak today announced the year 2012 annual budget. And this technically one party Malay-sian state yet again on the 54^th Budget being tabled in Parliament today (7/10/11) it segregated the Indian poor in the RM232.8 Billion National Budget.

This is despite the fact that even way back in 1957, 68% of the country’s income was contributed by the Indian poor plantation workers in the rubber and palm oil sectors. And it is with this income that became the foundation for this country to be built to what it is today. But after having made use of the Indian poor they have been dumped like sucked oranges. For example even today’s Malaysia Nanban (7/10/2011) at page 5 reported that for the Kuala Pilah Tamil school they have to beg for even a school rubbish bin.

Like in the 54^th previous years the Najib administration has refused to put in place a proper mechanism where the budgetary allocations meant for the poor especially the Indian poor filters down. And then Najib Razak like all his previous UMNO predecessors will get to say that the Budget policy was good but it’s implementation was bad.

For the 2012 Budget the following did not take into consideration the interest of the Indian poor:-

1) In the Besut Agropolitan Project, there is zero mechanism for the Indian poor to be included in the 10 acre agriculture land ownership.

2) In the RM100 Million small and Medium Scale Enterprises, allocation RM10 Million Emergency Fund allocation, and RM 1.2 Billion in welfare programmes for Senior Citizens, poor children and disabled Indian poor RM 443 Million to build 8,000 low cost homes there is no mechanism in place to include and not to segregate and exclude Indian entrepreneurs and the Indian poor.

3) As for the RM100 Million allocation for Tamil schools, it becomes meaningless when correspondingly a minimum of 5 acres of state land is denied to all the 523 Tamil schools. No budgetary allocations to acquire land for all these 523 Tamil schools.

(Note: We have not forgotten that in the year 2009 Prime Minister Najib Razak had similarly made a pledge of RM100 Million for Tamil schools but zero of that funds ever filtered down to any one Tamil school on the lamest excuse that “the price of materials had gone up”.

4) Despite the RM400 Million budget for Felda zero allocation has been made to include the Indian poor in the Felda 10 acre land ownership schemes.

5) There has been no minimum wage of RM1,500.00 for all including the Indian poor workers.

6) The RM 15 Million Free Legal Aid Budget for the 28 million population @ RM 53.57 per head is insulting.

7) RM90 Million was rightly allocated for the Orang Asli (0.1% of population). But not even 1 % ie RM232.8 Billion was ever allocated for the pressing needs of the 8% Indian poor population.

We do not expect much save and except for the usual generated hype among the Indians in this years budget. It is basically old wine in new bottles.

P. Uthayakumar