Govt Aid For Smes Can See But Cannot Touch

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Ipoh Timur MP Wong Kah Woh urged the Finance Ministry to be flexible in approving the second phase of Bantuan Prihatin Rakyat cash aid.
Wong noted those who fail to qualify for the Bantuan Prihatin Rakyat (BPR) Phase 2 can submit their appeal to the Inland Revenue Board (IRB) which must be done by appointment, but many of the slots nationwide are already filled.
The appeal period commenced on June 15 and will run until June 30. Meanwhile, the current Covid-19 lockdown is expected to end on June 28.
Wong said while the appeal can also be done online, those who are non-tech savvy will still need to visit the IRB's office.
He expressed concern that there may be a last-minute rush at IRB when the total lockdown is lifted even though there is an appointment system.
"It will be disastrous if people started to cramp IRB branches to submit appeal documents just to catch the appeal deadline," he said.
Automatic approval for Phase 1 recipients
Wong said one way to ease the process was to automatically approve recipients who qualified for the BPR aid during Phase 1 for Phase 2 as well.
"There is also no reason for the government to make the people’s life difficult by not having an automatic approval of BPR Phase 2 to all BPR Phase 1 recipients.
"The people are in dire need of government aid now after the imposition of movement control order (MCO) 2.0 and MCO 3.0 in a short period of six months this year.
"Any review of the qualifications of the applicants or recipients should not be the government’s priority now as surely the people cannot be richer in May 2021 (BPR Phase 2) compared to January 2021 (BPR Phase 1)," he said.
He also said the government should give more time to applicants to file their appeals.
Wong said the appeal process is causing stress to applicants and urged Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz to be more flexible.

"I call upon Tengku Zafrul to be more practical and flexible in addressing the people’s problem and cut down the unnecessary bureaucracy to ensure that government aid reaches the people at the soonest," he said. - Mkini

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