They’re poor, and so is their quality of life
Unicef: They also lack education options
Children in low-cost flats are living hand-to-mouth and dicing with danger on a daily basis.
PETALING JAYA: A five-year-old boy was playing with his seven-year-old brother while their mother was preparing lunch. The corridor was their playground.
Then, tragedy struck. The younger boy somehow fell through the railing and plunged six floors to his death at the Kota Damansara People’s Housing Project (PPR). It is an old story – it happened in January 2015.
The problem, however, still exists today. Children living in such low-cost housing suffer higher levels of malnutrition and get fewer education opportunities compared with the national average, a Unicef study revealed yesterday.
The “Children Without: A study of urban child poverty and deprivation in low-cost flats in Kuala Lumpur” highlights that poverty impaired the education opportunities of children living in flats, making them vulnerable to malnourishment. While the national poverty rate is less than 1%, the report stated that 99.7% of the children in low-cost flats lived in relative poverty with 7% in absolute poverty.
The study also found that 15% of children below the age of five were underweight while 22% were stunted, which is almost two times higher compared with the KL average.
About 23% of the children were either overweight or obese, six times higher compared with the KL average of 4%.
The study also found that while almost all children aged between seven and 17 went to school, only 50% of five- to six-year-olds attended preschool compared with the 92% national enrolment in 2015.
About one in three households surveyed had no reading material for children aged below 18, while about four in 10 households had no toys for those aged below five.
Produced by DM Analytics, the study carried out in 2017 surveyed close to 1,000 households with children in PPR housing in Kuala Lumpur and Petaling Jaya.
“Children in low-cost flats live in Kuala Lumpur within proximity to amenities; yet, they have less access to nutritious food, don’t go to preschool, live in perceived unsafe areas and have less opportunity to learn and play than most children in Malaysia,” said Unicef representative Marianne Clark-Hattingh.
Many of them have no proper space to study, with housing units being too small, and are easily lured into bad habits as they are forced to hang around dirty, cramped neighbourhoods frequented by small-time criminals and drug users.
Saving money, whether for retirement or emergencies, remains a pipe dream for the PPR dwellers, says the Unicef report.
Survey personnel for the newly published study on urban child poverty, Noor Syafiqah Norrashid, was heartbroken to hear families living in PPR were taking up side jobs so that they could afford their children’s school fees.
To support the 2050 National Transformation (TN50) and Agenda 2030, the report proposes several policies and interventions to alleviate child poverty in urban areas.