He said the food aid for poor families with schoolchildren could ensure they had access to nutritious food for their growth and development.

“When the movement control order (MCO) was enforced, schools were closed and the Supplementary Food Programme, which had been a source for nutritious food for children in the B40, could not continue.

“More than 2.6 million students across the country fully depend on this programme,” he said in a Facebook post today.

Maszlee also proposed a special six-month allowance for teachers to help them improve their digital devices and connectivity to better teach online classes.

“This would help them to formulate more innovative curriculums during the pandemic, because the mainstream pedagogy was no longer suitable at this time,” he said.

Another suggestion for poor families, he said, would be to give them special incentives if their children continued to attend school.

“This is important following a Unicef report which stated that one in five children had lost interest in their studies following the MCO.

“Therefore, this incentive would ensure that families affected by the pandemic could still send their children to school,” he said, adding that the children’s education would also be “saved”.

Maszlee also called for public varsities to be given special grants to produce quality content for online classes, saying this was a major struggle faced by lecturers with virtual lessons.

“This grant will enable lecturers to develop quality content through private-partnerships and renowned universities abroad. Developing quality content will help more than 35,000 lecturers in the country to teach more effectively.”

He added that canteen operators and workers should be given special aid as they have also been affected by the closure of schools during the MCO.

He said a special grant would help operators to resume operations when schools reopen, while aid specifically for canteen workers would preserve the livelihood of more than 70,000 employees.