THE free-breakfast programme in schools should not distinguish between rich and poor children as this will stigmatise those from needy families, said an economist.

Zouhair Mohd Rosli, who co-authored a United Nations study on child stunting and malnourishment in Malaysia, said breakfasts should be given to all children in the selected schools. 

The programme is an effective way of dealing with malnourishment among the poor who complain they can’t afford healthy food, he said.

“It’s a policy that can help malnourishment. But if we target just poor kids, it will stigmatise them because if you go and get the free meal, it means you are poor and that is not good for the child,” Zouhair told The Malaysian Insight.

“Cost-wise, it can be quite high but the government can manage it by cutting back on unnecessary spending and channelling the funds there,” said Zouhair of policy research and consulting firm DM Analytics.  

The Education Ministry rolled out the first phase of the free-breakfast programme (PSP) at 100 primary schools nationwide on January 20.

The first phase is estimated to benefit 37,000 pupils and costs about RM22 million.

The schools are selected based on the highest percentage of pupils from the B40 group, including national primary schools (SK) and national-type Chinese (SJKC) and Tamil schools (SJKT).

The ministry aims to extend the programme to all 7,776 primary schools to benefit about 2.7 million pupils.

However, some critics asked why the scheme should benefit middle-class children.

Zouhair disagreed with this view, saying that the government is right to choose schools based on their population of poor pupils but stressed that every child there should receive the free meal.

Separating children based on their parents’ income levels is unwise as the stigma affects their self-confidence and early development.

“It cannot target parents’ income because it will stigmatise the poorer children. It’s unfair to them because they did not choose to be born into a poor household.”

The 2016 Unicef Malaysia-DM Analytics study shows that 20.7% or two out of every 10 children in Malaysia are stunted, a rate that is higher than Ghana, an African country whose economy is six times smaller.

The stunting rate in Kelantan at 34% is even worse than Zimbabwe (27.6%) and Swaziland (25.5%).

PSP is a stop-gap measure to address the high rates of malnutrition among poor children, said Zouhair, since the government can’t afford the more comprehensive programmes that the study recommends.  

The authors proposed that the government give out RM200 per month to all pregnant mothers and those whose children are below the age of two.

This is to ensure that the women are able to afford healthy food for themselves and their babies, said Zouhair.

“The thing about stunting is that you can reverse its effects if your child is below two years old. But once they grow older, the effects are harder to address.”

Stunting impacts a child’s ability to learn and those who grow into adults are twice as likely as their normal peers to develop non-communicable diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes. – February 12, 2020.