“Go to any low-cost flat and look at the number of Astro dishes you see hanging from the balconies. They can afford Astro but they can’t afford food,” Suriana Welfare Society executive director Scott J Wong told FMT.
He said it was obvious that many of the urban poor were financially illiterate, adding that this in itself was the cause of the cycle.
“In a typical situation, you can imagine the mother nagging the father and the baby crying because he’s hungry.
“What does the father do? He goes to buy liquor to forget his troubles, he comes back home drunk, he starts beating the wife or child, and all the while the children are watching and learning. The cycle continues.”
To tackle some of the problems associated with urban poverty like alcoholism, drug abuse, domestic abuse and gangsterism, Suriana has opened a childcare centre in Block 5 of the Desa Mentari Apartments.
However, Wong believes it will not be enough to focus only on the children.
“In order to break this cycle of poverty, yes, we have to focus most of our attention on the children but the grown-ups need help as well.
“Suriana is looking at how we can teach the adults to stop wasting their money on booze and cigarettes, and focus on what they really need.”
Wong said apart from financial literacy, Suriana also wanted to teach the urban poor about becoming smart shoppers.
“If I tell you that I do my grocery shopping at Cold Storage, you’ll probably think I’m a rich guy who doesn’t know the troubles affecting the poor – but you’d be wrong.
“In Cold Storage, they have a section for after-shelf life products where a bag of flour can go even lower than RM2.
“Most people think that once food goes beyond the shelf life, you can no longer consume it. That’s not true. Food can stay good for longer periods, especially if you’re talking about food that’s canned.”
The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) recently conducted a study on urban poor children living in the Klang Valley.
The study was conducted between Aug 20 and Sept 30 last year, and involved 966 heads of households and 2,142 children from 17 different locations in Kuala Lumpur and Petaling Jaya.
The study found that Malaysian children are worse off than some of the country’s nine Asean neighbours and noted that malnutrition for children in low-cost flats was worse than the national and Kuala Lumpur average, with the prevalence of malnutrition higher among older children.