MOA updating data on farmers´s subsidy, incentive recipients

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 3 — The Ministry of Agriculture and Agro-based Industry (MOA) is updating data on recipients of the Farmers Subsidy and Incentive Scheme, which is implemented to increase the country’s rice supply, to ensure the assistance to reach the target group.

Its minister Datuk Seri Salahuddin Ayub said the effort was aimed to prevent leakage in subsidy scheme as well as to help increase the country’s rice supply.

“I hope for next year, we will be able to have a more ‘genuine’ data to prevent leakage in distribution of the subsidy.

“But it’s not easy (to update the data) as it involves farmers and villagers, we have to be very careful … we can’t appear harsh by enforcing something abruptly,” he said when met by reporters in the Parliament lobby today.

In the Auditor-General’s Report 2018 Series 2 released yesterday, a farmer who died 40 years ago was among 7,061 individuals found to be listed as the recipients of the subsidy and incentive scheme.

The report also discovered a total of 3,210 and 7,061 farmers who had died still received subsidies and incentives respectively during the replanting season amounting to RM57.92 million.

Salahuddin said since he led the ministry on May 20 last year, he had studied all the facts related to the scheme before directing for the data updating process to be implemented.

“If a farmer has died, we want to see who his heirs are, the size of the land and the amount of subsidy received,” he said. — BERNAMA

Source: Bernama