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Colin Nicholas said that as indigenous people, Aboriginal people should be entitled to all benefits provided by the People’s Trust.
(FMT) – An activist has called on the People’s Trust (Mara) to invest more resources in empowering Orang Asli, saying they should be able to fully enjoy all benefits as part of the Aboriginal community.
“It stands to reason that Orang Asli should be entitled to the benefits of whatever policies Mara sets,” Colin Nicholas, coordinator of the Centre for Orang Asli Concerns (COAC), told FMT.
Therefore, Nicholas said there was no need to set up a similar body dedicated to Orang Asli affairs, as Cameron Highlands MP Ram Lino suggested last month.
Ramli said the new statutory bodies could replicate the success of Malaysia’s higher education institutions in producing a large number of Malay and Bumiputera professionals, adding that their efforts had alleviated poverty in the country to some extent.
Ramli, the only indigenous MP in the lower house of parliament, also said the Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs (Jakoa) was ineffective in this regard. He said Jakoa representatives in the counties were only senior clerks and did not have the power to make important decisions without consulting their superiors.
On Saturday, Parti Indigenous Malaysia (Asli) president Rashid Ka’ rejected Ramli’s proposal and called for a shake-up of the Orang Asli Ministry, which he said was currently poorly managed and had failed to introduce reforms that would benefit the community, including helping lift them out of poverty.
Nicholas pointed out that poverty was widespread among the Malays and even the approach taken by Mara “did not work”.
Earlier this year, Economic Minister Rafizi Ramli said the Bumiputera poverty rate was 7.9% in 2022, followed by Indians (5.4%) and Chinese (1.9%).
“It would not work to have a similar body just for Aboriginal people,” Nicholas said.
He also said that setting up an institution similar to the Malaysian Bumiputera Association for the Orang Asli would exacerbate people’s negative perceptions of the Orang Asli, including the belief that they are poor.
“That assumes that all First Nations people need support,” he said.
In any case, he said, there is no guarantee that managers at these institutions will not abuse their positions for personal gain.
Nicholas also said that institutions set up along racial lines were bound to be rife with abuse.
“They should cater to specific groups that need support, such as the extremely poor, regardless of race,” he said.
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