A/HRC/44/40/Add.1 asked for data, State government officials often indicated they would need to make a request to the central Government. Researchers can apply to the Department of Statistics for select sets of data, but several said their requests were often not granted. International organizations and even State officials said they too had to make specific requests for information and that their access was essentially at the mercy of the Department of Statistics. 26. Government officials bluntly contradicted these consistent reports from a variety of sources. A representative of the Department of Statistics said that the Department “makes the data available to all”, while an official of the Ministry of Economic Affairs said the Government provides what it can, but must be careful with data owing to privacy concerns. Since many other countries provide anonymized data without compromising privacy, the policy seems more likely to be motivated by a desire to conceal from the public information that might not be favourable to the Government. 27. In some cases, it appears that important data is not even being collected. And in others, existing data cannot be disaggregated to shed light on the situation of vulnerable target groups. Officials were consistently unable to provide key figures. The Ministry of Housing said there were no records kept as to the number of people evicted from public housing. Officials were consistently unwilling or unable to estimate the size of vulnerable populations, for which the Government does not publish official figures. They could not provide estimates of undocumented immigrants, stateless people or those in need of lowcost housing, even though other countries routinely create such estimates, which are essential to informed policymaking. 42 28. The statistics that are available are carefully managed and presented in a way that often obscures crucial details. Existing data on poverty and inequality is not presented in a way that disaggregates by gender or that distinguishes between Malay and non-Malay Bumiputeras, obscuring the situation of indigenous peoples. 29. Income and poverty statistics are often presented by household, rather than the more common and helpful unit of household income per capita or per adult, obscuring smaller incomes per person in larger households. That also skews ethnicity figures because the categorization is based entirely on the ethnicity of the head of household and does not adequately capture multi-ethnic households. 30. In 2018, the Government committed to “embrace transparency.” 43 If that commitment is to be honoured, it should make available online microdata from key national surveys, such as the Household Income and Basic Amenities Survey, as well as analytical reports. It should also produce definitive estimates for vulnerable populations for which no data exists and consider incorporating a right to information in the freedom of information bill currently under consideration. It should use the 2020 census as an opportunity to collect and publish adequate data on vulnerable groups and the Special Rapporteur is encouraged to learn that it will include a question on disabilities. IV. Incomes and cost of living 31. Malaysia introduced a minimum wage in 2013, applicable to both Malaysian and foreign workers, which increased the wages of an estimated 3.2 million private sector workers, 30 per cent of the total workforce. But enforcement has been uneven, particularly 42 43 For example, the United States of America publishes annual estimates of the number of individuals with irregular status: Department of Homeland Security, “Population estimates – illegal alien population residing in the United States: January 2015” (December 2018). Ministry of Economic Affairs, Mid-term review of the Eleventh Malaysia Plan 2016–2020, ch. 10, p. 9. 7