“The pool of people who need help has grown,” said Yeoh at a mother’s day celebration. “So now we’re no longer looking at B40, maybe we are looking at B60 or B80.”

Yeoh said the welfare department must increase the number of welfare officers to handle the growing number of people in need of aid.

She said when the matter was last raised in Parliament, MPs were told that there had been an increase in applications for welfare aid, but there was not enough manpower in the welfare department.

Welfare officers were needed to make house calls for interviews to ensure that welfare applicants qualified for aid, she said.

Yeoh, who is MP for Segambut, was deputy minister for women, family and community development in the former Pakatan Harapan government.

She said the amount of welfare aid should be adjusted to reflect the living costs of every state. “If you give RM500 monthly in both Kuala Lumpur and Perlis, maybe you can survive on that amount in Perlis, but not in KL.”

It was time for the women, family and community development ministry to start looking at the impact of Covid-19 on the cost of living and work with state governments to top up the amount of welfare aid where required, she said.