PROGRAM PEMBASMIAN KEMISKINAN:PENGARUH PENGETAHUAN DAN TANGGAPAN KE ATAS PENGLIBATAN KOMUNITI RUMAH PANJANG

This study addresses the issue of eradicating poverty by looking into the level of political support and the local government and its relation with the participation of the community in the Citizens’ Prosperity Development Scheme or Skim Pembangunan Kesejahteraan Rakyat (SPKR). The effort to eradicate poverty in a comprehensive manner necessitates support, commitment, and active participation from the locals. Nonetheless, the community’s readiness to get involved is influenced by a variety of elements. This article contends that high political and local government support is an element that leads to high community participation in the programme. This great involvement will then contribute to the success of the programme in eradicating poverty. The questionnaire survey had been done on 260 Heads of the Household or Ketua Isi Rumah (KIR) of a longhouse in the Song District, Sarawak. As a whole, the discovery of the study reveals that the majority of the KIR assume that they had only received moderate level of political support and local government support (38.1%) as compared to low level (33.5%) and high level (28.5%) of support in the implementation of the programme under SPKR in the longhouse. The Chi Square Test Analysis demonstrates that there is a significant relationship (P ≤ 0.05) between the level of political and local government support with the level of community involvement in decision-making, sharing of benefit, implementation, and programme evaluation activities, under SPKR. Such finding has portrayed the fact that the higher the political and local government support received by the community, then the higher the community’s participation in activities of making decisions, implementating, sharing the benefit and evaluating the programme.