Putrajaya giving out handouts to increase average incomes to a certain level to achieve developed nation status by 2020 is misleading, said Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
In a blog posting, the former prime minister said per capita income should not be a measure of Malaysia's achievement of developed nation status.
"By itself, per capita income will not make Malaysia a developed country. It would be even more misleading when the income is due to handouts by the government," he said.
He noted that socialists and communists had tried to improve their people's income by giving them cash and support facilities. But socialism and communism eventually failed and people still had "to resort to free enterprise and hard work", he wrote on his popular blog, chedet.cc.
"We must earn our income through higher productivity and not through handouts by the government," he said.
Malaysia's longest serving prime minister of 22 years said it was unfair for people to say he did not understand Bantuan Rakyat 1Malaysia (BR1M), the government programme which dispenses cash aid to low-earning households and individuals.
Since March this year, he has become more vocal in criticising the programme and Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak for using it as an election goody.
Najib, however, has defended BR1M by saying that it was part of the government’s efforts to move away from blanket subsidies and instead provide targeted aid to the people.
Dr Mahathir, who has also held the finance minister's post, said he had been opposed to giving monetary handouts as a way to increase income "right from the beginning".
"If at all, financial aid should be given to the very poor who are unable to work to earn an income. My primary objection is because handouts on such a scale look too much like bribery."
Furthermore, Dr Mahathir said, when BR1M was given near elections or listed in the election manifesto, it created the impression that the aid was used to buy votes.
"If incomes are to be increased, it should be by way of creating opportunities for work or business.
"But BR1M has more negative implications than that. It increases the tendency towards personal dependence on the government even for one’s income, without any effort by oneself.
"It weakens the character of people and reduce their competitiveness in the market place," he wrote.
High incomes should come from increases in productivity, which can only come about through better education and training, Dr Mahathir said.
"The ability to increase productivity comes from greater added value to the products.
"It follows that when we promote industries with greater added value, then the incomes of employees would increase due to greater contribution of the employees."
Noting that government revenue was derived from taxes, Dr Mahathir said he did not think that people liked to see their taxes being used as part of election ploys.
"Certainly they would not want their hard-earned money to be expended on winning popularity for anyone or political parties or administrations," he wrote. – November 14, 2014.
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