How far will this Prihatin Package 2.0 reach?

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Just before the Sabah state election, the premier of the rebel government Muhyiddin Yassin has announced the second batch of the Prihatin package which will focus mainly on B40 and M40 groups. They are the Prihatin special grant amounting to RM600 million, employment subsidy grant totalled about RM2.4 billion and the Prihatin national assistance which is about RM7 billion in total.

Initially, when the first batch of the Prihatin package was announced to assist the majority who are affected by the movement control order following the widespread of the coronavirus in the population, almost everyone who are affected, be it workers, businessmen, self-employed or even freelancers applied for all those grants which was available online.

However, majority of the applicants were later informed that they are not qualified just because there were this and that, and many more other reasons or excuses were given. Do we all remember that Muhyiddin had "promised" a number of times that "No one will be left behind", but what we had been observing is many are left behind. Businesses and factories resorted to closure in the end as they are not qualified for the grant due to their "profitable gains" as reported in their 2019 revenue. 

As the result of these businesses and factories' closure, many workers became unemployed and when these unemployed populations wanted to get those grants as promised by the rebel government, most of them ended up being notified that they are not qualified because of their "lucrative" salaries they had earned as of 2019 declared income. Asides, other notifications also came with lame excuses, like applicants were over-qualified, they household value were stable, they owned sustantial properties and many more kinds of excuses you may have never heard of it before.

So, initially and eventually, the rebel government announced a very attractive package called"Prihatin" to assist the population to ease their burden due to their downed businesses, businesses closure, unemployement, stop-work order and many more of those affected, but somehow all these so-called Prihatin package has never reach them when difficult times of such only to be notified that these group of people were unqualified to received all those grants.

How far will all these so-called Prihatin package 2.0 reach? Are these grants targeting the correct groups of people in the population? What is disappointing here is, during the initial "availability" of the Prihatin grant, many of those from the wealthy, members of parliment and state assemblymen from the current ruling Perikatan Nasional (PN) and even some borard members of GLCs or top leaders of the PN component parties are seen enjoying from the fruits of these Prihatin grants they received. To the most shocking experience was, even the children of these PN VIPs got to received these grants while the ordinary people out there were deliberately left out.

We want to seek a clearer clarification from the premier of this rebel government today, are they truly sincere in wanting to hand out these "Prihatin" grants to our people? Or are these grants applies only for their cronies and family members of the top ruling class in this country? Do you dare to be transparent and publish all these transactions in public if you are saying that you have indeed disbursed the funds to those who are really in need? Do you dare to publish or make these transactions known to all for public scrutiny?

We think that this rebel government will finally respond with the Official Secrets Act, citting that all transactions related to public funds or movements of other government funds are classified as confidential and should not be made public and "should anyone were to attempt to obtain or make public of such will be detained, charged, fined and imprisoned" under the oppressive Official Secrets Act. Indeed, this will definitely be their response in face of public pressure.

So, is it worth to speak up for this rebel government?

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