Activation Policies for the Poor in OIC Member States
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Supporting infrastructure
The consistency of reporting across different programmes could be enhanced and common and
consistent KPIs may be determined.
The wide range of public support set up often has different targets and outcomes. From a
performance perspective, and particularly in a period where programmes are being tested and
piloted, good data and performance monitoring may be required to ensure that the success of
different programmes is understood effectively. When measures are different, comparisons cannot
be made easily between different programmes and therefore performance cannot be understood.
The required outcomes and performance measures could be collated for all current programmes.
These could be compared for similar programmes and where possible aligned for current or future
contracting. The measures may also be collated to create one complete reporting of the number of
individuals participating in employment support and their progress.
The dissemination of labour market intelligence could be supported.
Effective labour markets provide information on not only the jobs available at any given time, but
also the likely prospects and growth opportunities. The government could commission a consistent
set of labour market information that can be used to inform jobseekers of current and future labour
market opportunities.
3.2 Malaysia
3.2.1 Background
Malaysia has a total population of approximately 30 million. The unemployment rate in Malaysia is
at around 3%. There is no unemployment benefit provided but a level of social protection is
provided to low income households.
Malaysia represents a country where there has been real success in tackling and addressing poverty.
The poverty and unemployment rate in Malaysia has declined dramatically after its independence in
1963. While 49.3%of Malaysian households lived below the poverty line in 1970, the poverty rate
has reduced significantly to 16.5% in 1990, and further declined to 3.6% in 2007. The
unemployment rate also followed the same pattern. Although 5.6% of the total labour force (15 to 64
years old) was unemployed in 1984, and this figure increased in the following years 7.4% in 1986,
7.3% in 1987 and 7.3% in 1988, the unemployment rate was consistently below 4% in the years
from 1995 to 2009. The reduction of poverty and unemployment rate can be attributed to the rapid
economic growth in Malaysia which generated higher-paid employment opportunities and profitable
micro and small-scale businesses opportunities. Moreover, the government of Malaysia undertakes
several strategies to increase productivity, diversify sources of income and improve the quality of
life of the poor. These poverty and unemployment reduction strategies are the integral part of
Malaysia’s core development plans. The government encourages and works together with private
sector organisations and NGOs to reduce poverty and unemployment. Malaysia’s projects under the
development program for the hardcore poor provide assistance to two NGOs; namely, Yayasan
Basmi Kemiskinan (Poverty Eradication Foundation) and Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia (AIM). Among
them, the most active one, AIM uses the group based Grameen Bank (a Bangladeshi micro finance
organization) model and provides collateral free credit to poor and hardcore poor households in
order to improve their socio-economic conditions as well as reduce unemployment and poverty rate
in Malaysia.
The key policy objective of the Malaysian government is to become a high income country (as
classified by the World Bank) by 2020. This objective was first established by the government in
1991 with the launch of Vision 2020. The government regularly publishes an economic plan which
sets out how the government will achieve the focus of becoming a high income country in 2020. The
current plan (the 10th) was published in 2009. However, at the same time as securing growth for