KUCHING, Jan 16: The Welfare, Community Wellbeing, Women, Family and Childhood Development Ministry will be working closely together with the National Unity and Integration Department (JPNIN) to achieve the target of 1,000 Kawasan Rukun Tetangga (KRT) or neighbourhood committees in the state this year.
Its minister Dato Sri Fatimah Abdullah said, at the moment there are 976 KRTs in the state, so her ministry together with JPNIN will intensify their efforts with various programmes in the pipeline to promote the setting up of KRTs to reach the target of at least 1,000.
“We have various promotional programmes in the pipeline to be carried out in (various) areas based on the maps that we have. With the help of the elected members of the various areas as well as the district officers and community leaders, we hope to carry out the promotional programmes and reach our target within this year,” she told a press conference at Bangunan Baitul Makmur, Petra Jaya here today.
Earlier Fatimah received a courtesy call from JPNIN led by its state director Dirwana Azool along with some of its officers.
She said among the promotional programmes that would be carried out to promote the establishment of new KRTs would be the Rancangan Integrasi Murid Untuk Perpaduan (RIMUP) which aims to promote unity among students in schools.
“We believe as teachers and former teachers, if we want to achieve ‘perpaduan’ (unity), it must start from young,” said Fatimah.
She said for the RIMUP programme, the challenge would be for homogeneous schools, as the students would have little experience interacting with students from other races.
She said various cultural events would be organised especially for RIMUP to be able to reach out to students from homogeneous schools.
Meanwhile, Fatimah also revealed that Petronas through its corporate social responsibility (CSR) programme has contributed RM250,000 to the ministry to help JPNIN fund and boost its volunteer patrol units in existing KRTs this year.
She said an official symbolic ceremony to receive the contribution would be held during the Ministry’s open day scheduled for Feb 3 with Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Abang Johari Tun Openg officiating.
Fatimah said assistance and help from various NGOs and corporate bodies were very much appreciated as it would be difficult to rely solely on the government alone.
At the end of the day, Fatimah said, the results of the various programmes and activities would be evaluated by means of two indexes — community stress index and intercommunal relation index.
She explained that the community stress index would be evaluated based on the stress levels of a community.
Factors that would affect stress levels included crime, livelihood and politics, while for the intercommunal relation index factors that would be evaluated include goodwill and relationships. — DayakDaily
