Our newly appointed ministers are certainly men of substance. A few days ago the newly appointed health minister, Dr Chua Soi Lek, said that waiting time at community polyclinics would be reduced by half and now we hear that the new minister for rural and regional development, Abdul Aziz Shamsuddin intends to eradicate hardcore poverty and modernise villages in three years.

The name change for his ministry certainly has given him the impetus and sudden immediate power to do what the BN government has in the past utterly failed to do.

One only has to go to rural areas in Terengganu, Kelantan, Kedah to see what has been achieved under the prolonged BN rule. One just has to talk to the people in these areas to find out what progress and improved economic power the long BN rule has brought them.

Kelantan and Terengganu may have been under PAS at times during the past five decades, but the two states have also been under the BN. Development requires the federal government to provide the funds but during the periods when the states were under BN, they have been subjected to fund limitations.

A good example is the withdrawal of Petronas oil royalty payments to Terengganu when PAS took over the state after the 1999 elections.

I am indeed happy and it is heartening to hear what the new minister has to say regarding his programme to eradicate poverty:

"Although this ministry has a very heavy task as it covers large rural areas in both Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah and Sarawak, I am confident this can be done if we put our minds to changing the attitude of rural folk. We want to reactivate and make the ministry more dynamic."

It is obvious whoever that the previous minister (can't recall his name) must have slept on his job for this ministry now to have a name change and be reactivated and 'dynamicised'. The new minister has also a pan-Malaysia outlook for he has taken Sabah and Sarawak into consideration, very refreshing indeed.

And he seems to exude confidence about his programme. We must certainly wish him well and look towards 2007, a short three years away, when rural poverty will be a thing of the past. Can we also have such a dynamic minister to attend to urban poverty?