Melissa Ngiam, chief operating officer of Yayasan Generasi Gemilang, told FMT there were no numbers to show whether the financial aid had actually helped the underprivileged.

“If you ask us whether government policies can help solve poverty issues, my answer is no. Not unless the government is able to measure or analyse whether the policies implemented have proven to be helpful.”

She said the government must ensure that the policies and programmes rolled out are properly enforced.

“Even for us and the programmes that we run, we measure the output – what changes we have achieved from running the programmes.”

Ngiam, who joined the foundation in 2011, gave the example of several schools it had encountered which offered subsidies for parents who could not afford to buy textbooks.

“But we also discovered that these subsidies didn’t end up benefiting the children.”

She said much of the time, the children were left in homes as their parents could not afford to provide for them. But when their caretakers went to school to collect the aid, they were informed that the money was already collected by the parents.

“The money was collected but not channelled to the underprivileged children, leaving the problem of no school books for these children unsolved.”

Ngiam also questioned the figures on poverty revealed by researchers at a forum she had recently attended, saying she believed the numbers were actually much higher.

“Our organisation has been working with children who live in low-cost government flats or PPR, and we are still finding it hard to assist them with their daily needs.”

She said even in townships like Bandar Utama and other places in the Klang Valley, many children went to school without having anything to eat.

“In one of the schools we visited in 2014, we saw six boys sitting in a circle, sharing a bun. Each of them took a pinch off that bun during recess because they could not afford to buy food from the canteen.

“That inspired us to start our breakfast programme, Super Sarapan.”

Generasi Gemilang now runs its breakfast programme at about 20 schools in the Klang Valley and another four in Miri, Sarawak. At some of these schools, it caters lunch for students in the afternoon session as well.

It also supplies school uniforms for underprivileged children.

Ngiam said the foundation began doing so after coming across a family in which two brothers who went to the same school shared a single shirt.

“One would go to school in the morning session, then return home, quickly take off his shirt and give it to his brother who attended the afternoon session.

“Some wash their shirts every day, others don’t. On rainy days when their laundry cannot dry in time, they just don’t turn up at school.”

Ngiam also urged the government to assist in maintaining PPR flats, saying the living conditions at some were unacceptable.

“The mindset of some residents is that if the flats are not taken care of by the government, why pay any form of maintenance fee when they can use the money for other essentials?”

She also noted the tendency of PPR residents to throw rubbish out of their flat windows.

“One rule we have to follow when we enter PPR flats is never stand near the window without a cover over your head. They throw just about anything out the window – used diapers, furniture, trash and more.”

She recalled an occasion on which a durian was thrown from a flat unit above. It landed on the windscreen of a car next to her, smashing the glass.

“Until today, that problem is not solved. That’s how that accident happened earlier this year where someone lost his life.”

She was referring to an incident in January when a Form 3 student died after being struck by an office chair, believed to have been hurled from the upper floor of the Seri Pantai PPR in Pantai Dalam.

The victim suffered serious head injuries and died at the scene.

Last week, Deputy International Trade and Industry Minister Ong Kian Ming said the number of poor people in the country might be higher than reported due to inaccurate measurements.

He said although the official poverty rate dropped from 0.6% in 2014 to 0.4% in 2016, 0.4% of a population of some 30 million still worked out to 120,000 people nationwide.