PETALING JAYA: Maszlee Malik has revealed that his plan to give free meals to school children three years ago was met with a pushback from the then prime minister and finance minister.
Maszlee, who was the education minister in the Pakatan Harapan administration, had proposed a breakfast programme for students, starting with 100 schools in 2019.
This was to ensure proper nutrition for children and to encourage them to pick up good eating habits and do their dishes after their meals.
“You should remember that in 2019, I started the idea of having free school meals. We ran a pilot experiment on 100 schools and we were about to launch it in 2020.
“But the prime minister then, in 2020, and the finance minister strongly disagreed with that idea,” he said at a forum hosted by Monash University Malaysia today.
He did not mention any names, but Dr Mahathir Mohamad was the prime minister and Lim Guan Eng was the finance minister at the time.
Maszlee did not explain how the two stopped the plan from going through.
However, he said the current RM2.50 per meal system for deserving schoolchildren was unrealistic and burdensome to canteen operators, as the price tag was set in the 1980s.
He was asked how education policies could remain sustainable when there was a constant leadership change in the ministry.
The complimentary breakfast programme would have benefitted 2.7 million primary school pupils nationwide in 2020 and would have cost the government between RM800 million and RM1.67 billion, Parliament heard in October 2019.
The programme was cancelled at the height of the lockdowns imposed during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
Maszlee also asked about the state of the 1,000-odd schools found to be dilapidated in rural Sabah and Sarawak during his time as minister.
“I had been monitoring the progress of the repairs. But, what happened to the students? What happened to the teachers? What happened to the schools? Nobody talks about it any more,” he said.
He also said changes should be made to make education policies more resilient to weather challenges.
“But change should not be based on the change in political masters. Education should be separated from politics,” he added.