GOVERNMENT COMMITTED TO ERADICATING HARDCORE POVERTY

PENANG (Malaysia), March 5 (Bernama) -- Until February this year, the Penang
Social Welfare Department has given monthly financial aid to 9,688 poor families
compared with 7,519 last year.

Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng said the increase of 2,169 recipient families
was due to monitoring by the state government and all the district offices to
ensure the target group received the aid.

"The state government strives to eradicate hardcore poverty by drawing up
various programmes," he said, but admitted that there were problems in meeting
the target and hoped they could be resolved by the end of this month.

"With the ongoing efforts, we hope to take families earning less than RM500
monthly out of hardcore povery," he said when opening a workshop on "Changing
Mindsets" for the hardcore poor, here, Thursday.

He said the workshop, organised by the state government, was aimed at
motivating the hardcore poor to change their way of thinking and to be
enterprising and resilient in order to have a better life.

Lim said for Penang, the hardcore poverty line was measured as RM373 monthly
income for a household, where a study found that there were 1,000 hardcore poor
families in the state. (US$1=RM3.71)
-- BERNAMA