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UPDATED WITH MORE PICTURES. Isrin Basitul, 19, is married to a widower who earns around RM180 a month, even that is when time is good. It's hardcore poverty by Malaysian standard today.

Isrin and husband John Leesa, 51, had looked forward to a decent life all these years. However, John's salary from rubber-tapping has dropped to RM7 for every working day despite soaring prices of the commodity.

They have to resort to wild plants and fruits for food whenever cash dries up.

Apparently, the wealth of national development had not reached them equitably though they are classified as indigenous bumiputra.

23% below national poverty line

Despite relatively robust economic growth rates in the last decade, particularly from the flourishing tourism sector, Sabah still lags markedly behind the rest of the other states in the country in development outcomes, according to UNDP statistics.

About 23% of households in the state are still living below the national poverty line income, while child poverty rates stand at 42%. More than one fifth of the population aged six and over has never been to school.

Isrin and John are live data that add to the overall statistics, and things do not seem to improve fast on their plight.

The couple, from the Christian-Rungus sub-ethnic group, stay in a small one-room bamboo hut built on people's land in Tilugan, Kampung Simpang Empat, in the District of Pitas, Sabah. I met and talked to them on my trip to the poverty-stricken region with Prof Jeffrey Sachs last weekend.

Making life more tormenting is the misfortune that Isrin's eldest child with John is mentally-challenged while the new-born is epileptic. The two children didn't seem to get any encouraging medical care though the Pitas district hospital is just some 25 km away.

In rural healthcare in this modern day, people still have to go to the hospital and not the other way round. It casts a steep financial burden on abject poor like John, who lamented to us about the cost of travel and subsistence in seeking medical attention away from home.

I have no heart to make Isrin and John an exhibit of my travelogue photography, but I wish the Sabah government will do something soon, real soon, to make their life more bearable.

I fully understand the Prime Minister will be in Kota Kinabalu to launch the Sabah Development Corridor at the end of the month.

And I also fully understand RM180 is what golfers tip caddie after 18 holes on the greens. But we can't really blame Isrin and John for living in the wrong country.