National Population Policy Under Review

KUALA LUMPUR, The National Population Policy is undergoing a review to take into consideration recent demographic trends such as changes in the fertility rate, migration and ageing population."Our future population programme should not operate in a vacuum," said National Population and Family Development Board (LPPKN) acting director-general Rohani Ab Razak.

was an urgent need to fine-tune the policy and develop an action plan that would determine the demographic pathway for the next two decades, she said in her closing speech at the three-day National Population Conference 2007, here Thursday.She said LPPKN wanted to ensure that the action plan would be as comprehensive as possible and practical, which could be referred to and be used as an important tool in development planning by any agency.

said it was important that demographic factors and considerations were not left out in the planning and implementation of policies."We should never build a big school which can cater for thousands of students in an area that can supply only a few hundred or even a lesser number of students."We should never build a huge complex or building which is later under-utilised because people have difficulty accessing it," she said.

, Mat Nor Nawi, Deputy Director of the Distribution Section in the Economic Planning Unit of the Prime Minister's Department, said issues related to income inequality were among the challenges Malaysia had to tackle in the next five to 10 years in its efforts to balance social and economic development.Presenting a paper on "Balancing Growth with Distribution in Malaysia", he said these challenges included the need to address widening income inequality, tackling high inequality between different ethnic groups, and addressing the increasing inequality between the urban and rural areas and among regions and states.

The government plans to conduct a study with the help of Universiti Malaya to determine if there is any significant relation between growth and inequality," he said.He said the mean monthly gross household income in 2004 for Bumiputeras was RM2,716, Chinese RM4,439 and Indians RM3,453. The mean gross household income for the urban areas in 2004 was RM3,964 and the rural areas RM1,876.Another challenge on the table was eradication of poverty where, according to Mat Nor, pockets of poverty still remained, especially among the Orang Asli and the minorities in Sabah and Sarawak.

incidence of poverty in Malaysia in 2004 was 5.7 per cent.Mat Nor said the government's poverty-eradication strategies for 2001 to 2010, among others, were aimed at eradication of hardcore poverty and halving overall poverty by 2010.He also said that other issues that needed to be addressed were restructuring of society and regional distribution.

-- BERNAMA