MAY 10 — What happens when you have people who don't understand poverty in charge of the economy?
You get questionable ideas such as helping the B40 with vending machines.
Sometimes I wonder why Malaysia is afflicted with ministers who seem absolutely clueless about how the poor live.
The recent proposal to encourage entrepreneurship via vending machines is shortsighted and costly for the targeted participants.
While there will be no fees to use the vending machines, would-be sellers must find their own capital to produce the food (I presume) that would be sold via these avenues.
There are so many things that can go wrong in the process. Let's talk about the Malaysian cluelessness about hygiene and basic food standards.
Roadside stalls aside, vending machine-friendly foodstuff have to be of a certain hygiene standard.
Who will be checking the food to see if they meet said standards?
Like it or not, to meet said standards and have an inspection process will incur added costs.
Our economy minister thinks of it as one way to help the B40 out of poverty.
Why yes, helping the poor by encouraging them to take on debt to fund vending machine enterprises is truly beneficial... to lenders.
Who would buy from these vending machines? The reality is that B40 entrepreneurs will target people like themselves.
Another reality is that it would probably be cheaper and faster to just find food from a nearby gerai than access a vending machine.
There will of course be Muslims refusing to buy said food if it does not come with a halal certificate.
Many Malaysians do not realise just how expensive and labour consuming the process to get that precious halal stamp is — it does not take a day or weeks.
Most of the time it will take a year or more to be halal certified, the costs which the average B40 person would find hard to afford.
Dear government: instead of continuing with harebrained schemes to encourage entrepreneurship, maybe just give some people money?
To those who have demonstrated business acumen, give them grants and maybe provide them free advice and mentorship from those who do not think vending machines are the answer, instead of a new problem.
Not everyone is suited to going into business and even then, the factor of luck is something that cannot be ignored.
Sometimes it's a matter of selling the right thing, at the right time, in the right place.
The pandemic led to many businesses struggling or forced to close down and was a testament to how at the end of the day, businesses are about risk.
We need to do better than burden people with odds that never favoured them in the first place.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
