MITRA Disbursed RM100 Mln To Empower Indian Community - Ramanan

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 29 (Bernama) -- The Malaysian Indian Transformation Unit (MITRA) has fully allocated its entire RM100 million budget for 2025 to implement a plethora of 34 initiatives under the Socio-Economic Development Programme for the Indian Community (PPSMI).

Deputy Minister of Entrepreneur Development and Cooperatives Datuk Seri R. Ramanan, who oversees Indian community affairs and MITRA, said the programmes focused on four key areas of development: education and training, entrepreneurship and careers, spirituality and culture, and social well-being.

Among the initiatives approved were the Dharma MADANI Programme to empower Hindu houses of worship as well as local community centres with an allocation of RM20 million and a project to upgrade equipment and furniture at Tamil National-Type Schools (SJKT) with an allocation of RM12.8 million.

"All these programmes are currently at the fund disbursement stage and are expected to be completed by next month," he said during the winding-up debate 2026 Supply Bill (Budget) at the policy stage for MITRA at the Dewan Rakyat today.

He said a one-off assistance was also implemented for the minor maintenance of the homes of B40 Indian plantation workers with an allocation of RM10 million, along with a Dialysis Subsidy Assistance amounting to RM10 million to benefit more than 1,000 dialysis patients.

Ramanan said all approved programmes are being carried out based on the Management Guidelines approved by the Prime Minister's Department to ensure orderly and transparent spending.

“In the spirit of transparency and openness, I have also instructed MITRA to display the list of recipients in all the initiatives that I have mentioned earlier on the official MITRA website, so the community at large can check the list of beneficiaries of these programmes.

“The MADANI government and MITRA are always open, transparent and have nothing to hide,” he said.

Meanwhile, Ramanan explained that the MADANI Food Basket Programme was not the first to be implemented using MITRA funds, but was implemented several times in previous years with larger allocations.

He said that under the previous government, MITRA spent RM6 million for 24,467 beneficiaries of the programme in 2020, followed by RM14 million (in 2021) and RM4.6 million (2022), compared to only RM804,000 allocated for this year.

He said that this year’s programme is implemented in two phases. The first phase involves an allocation of RM500,000, which has been distributed to 5,100 recipients, while the second phase involves RM304,000, which will be distributed before the end of this year.

“The aid is distributed through the collaboration of Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia (AIM), with volunteers from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and local leaders to the Indian community from the B40 group,” he said.

Ramanan said the MADANI Food Basket initiative is a quick intervention by the government to ease the burden of the Indian B40 community in conjunction with the Deepavali celebration.

He said that AIM is currently collecting the list of recipients, and the complete list of all recipients will be displayed on the official MITRA website later.

-- BERNAMA