Why Are More Malaysian Children Getting Stunted?

 

It is embarrassing that the problem of stunting in our children must be highlighted by international data organisations before it gains more attention locally. Stunting has worsened in children in Malaysia for the past 15–20 years. We have had good national data from the national health and morbidity surveys to show that stunting in children under five years has increased from 16.6% in 2011 to 21.8% in 2022.

 

The World Health Organization (WHO) currently estimates that the stunting rate of children in Malaysia has increased to 24%. Stunting rates in much of the world are coming down. But ours is worsening. Countries poorer than us – Laos, Cambodia and Bangladesh – are doing better with a decline in stunting rates. We have now reached a childhood stunting rate close to that of Bangladesh. As a comparison, the 2024 childhood stunting rates in Singapore and South Korea were less than 3%.

 

The main reason for stunting among children in Malaysia is due to a lack of food security, i.e. a lack of adequate nutrition in childhood, as well as nutrition issues in pregnancy. Stunting is not something that happens just after you are born. It often happens before you are born.

The 2022 national survey data show a fairly high anaemic rate among pregnant women – a sign of nutrition issues and a major risk for low birth weight and stunting in the newborn. Data shows that stunting was higher among Sarawak and Sabah natives, and those with household incomes of less than RM1,000. Due to a lack of disaggregated data, Orang Asli children may have stunting rates of between 60% and 70%.

 

Stunting rates for children in detention, refugees, stateless people and migrants could be serious. All this points to poverty as a major factor for stunting. Over 1.2 million children are living in poverty in our country. In addition, we have many children who are eating enough calories to feel full, but are lacking essential nutrients – protein, iron, calcium and Vitamin D – required for brain and height growth.

 

Recent Southeast Asian nutrition surveys and Malaysia’s own 2024 health and morbidity survey show that 50% of Malaysian children do not eat a diverse diet, lacking a sufficient intake of fruits, vegetables and dairy.

 

Stunting is not primarily a medical problem or a failure of parenting. It is a failure of the many governments we have had in the past 20 years to act effectively in the face of good, national data showing that the problem has worsened. Right now, one in four children is stunted. The implications of this are staggering. The most tragic aspect of this crisis is its permanence – a window that closes forever.

 

We cannot continue with ‘business as usual’. The fact that past plans have failed means that current plans may not work. We must address the lack of accountability of government ministries and agencies tasked with stunting prevention. The critical window for preventing stunting is the first 1,000 days – from conception to a child’s second birthday. This must be our focus.

 

If we are serious about dealing with stunting in our children, we need a national bipartisan committee with all stakeholders involved. This committee needs strong civil society involvement and should be chaired by the prime minister.

 

Stunting steals a child’s future possibilities before they even have a chance to realise them. We cannot afford to let another generation grow up in the shadow of what they could have been. The impact of a 24% childhood stunting rate will harm the nation for decades into the future.

 

Reference:

Why are more Malaysian children getting stunted while neighbours reverse the trend?

Amar-Singh HSS, ALIRAN, 7 Feb 2026

Why Do We Discard Experience?

 

Something painful is quietly happening in our workforce today, and many of us pretend not to see it. A man turns 50. He is not tired, broken or incapable. In fact, he may be at his sharpest, having survived recessions, corporate politics, leadership changes, market crashes and digital transitions. He has seen projects fail and rise again. He knows where money leaks, where risks hide, and where egos destroy value. But the moment he updates his CV, something changes. Suddenly, he is ‘expensive’, ‘overqualified’ or ‘not aligned with company direction’. And if we are brutally honest, sometimes he is simply ‘too old’.

 

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org

 

We see job advertisements demanding 10 years’ experience but offering salaries that barely justify the responsibility. We see four roles merged into one title. We see cost optimisation replacing value optimisation. The irony, of course, is that in some fields, experience is still worshipped. Some lawyers with 25 years in court become more valuable, not less. Their experience compounds, and their clients trust them more deeply with time.

 

Many senior doctors are not viewed as ‘costly’ – patients will willingly wait months to consult them because experience, in that field, is directly linked to confidence and life-or-death decisions.

 

Yet in many corporate environments, the same experience is reduced to payroll weight – until a crisis hits, a system fails or skills shortage emerges. And suddenly, we are looking around saying, “We need the oldies.”

An uncomfortable truth keeps surfacing: we are losing experienced teachers faster than we can replace them. Over 19,000 teachers in Malaysia opted for early retirement between 2022 and May 2025, according to the deputy education minister.

 

Experts and education advocates have proposed bringing retired teachers back as part of the solution. It is not hard to understand why. Classroom management is not theory. Discipline is not learned from a PowerPoint slide. Teaching is not just content delivery – it is character formation.

 

Think of a retired teacher in her late 50s who has taught three generations in the same town. She knows family backgrounds and understands behavioural patterns. She can manage a classroom with a look, and her students still greet her years later with genuine respect. That is not just teaching skill. That is accumulated social capital. And when the system struggles, we are reminded, too late, of what we gave away.

 

Policymakers, human resources leaders and government-linked companies need to rethink the design. That means incentives for hiring senior professionals, flexible structures for advisory and mentoring roles, and structured integration programmes. This is not charity but the strategic retention of human capital. If we can accept that retired teachers are needed to help stabilise education, then we must accept the larger truth too. Experience is not a liability but a national asset. The real question is whether we are wise enough to build systems that value it – before we are forced to rescue it.

 

Reference:

Why we discard experience – and then scramble to get it back, Amarjeet Singh, Aliran 26 Feb 2026

 

Why Dividend Parity for EPF Conventional-Syariah Savings?

 

The Employees Provident Fund (EPF) has beaten “a 19-to-1 against odds” for a back-to-back parity for its 2025 and 2024 dividends for conventional and syariah savings. This may have raised eyebrows among conventional saving members of possible hidden hands.

For the record, EPF had on February 28 declared a dividend rate of 6.15% for Simpanan Konvensional with a total payout of RM67.1 bil and a similar 6.15% for Simpanan Shariah with a payout of RM12.5 bil, thus bringing total distribution for 2025 to RM79.6 bil.

 

Although the 2025 dividend rate was slightly lower to the 6.3% for 2024, the uniformity of both the conventional and syariah rates has led to trending news site The Coverage Media to comment: 

Mathematically, in a purely continuous model (like returns following normal distributions), the probability of two distinct giant funds producing exactly the same dividend rate (to two decimal places) in any given year is effectively zero. Even conservatively estimating discrete possibilities, the chance of them matching in two specific consecutive years is only about 4.9% – odds against it of roughly 19:1. Striking this ‘jackpot’ twice in a row? That’s truly legendary, almost magical! (The Coverage Media) 

For the record, the EPF syariah savings was introduced in 2017 as an option to members who prefer their retirement savings to invest solely in assets that adhere to Islamic principles.

There used to be a ~0.50% gap between in favour of conventional savings till 2023 – the first year of the Madani government rule – when the gap was reduced to 0.10%. 

The “mathematically unlikely” parity has EPF conventional savings members foreseeing the Islamic savings to perform even better if not surpassing conventional savings in the run-up to the 16^th General Election (GE16). On the other hand, some conventional savings members wondered over the likelihood of “dividend from the conventional savings being passed down to the Syariah-compliant savings to equalise both of them” which is “not impossible to do with some creative accounting”. 

If such is the case, then syariah-compliant proceeds from the conventional savings scheme may come from “haram stocks”. Therefore, “while the Syariah savings is Islamic, the action of equalising the dividends for both funds is not Islamic”. And if both are the same then why have two options? 

Don’t you think it is just incredible that haram and non-haram stocks or portfolios are identical in their returns and for 2 years? 

Reference:

PMX mocked for “GE16 vote buying” via 2nd straight EPF conventional-syariah savings dividend parity, Focus Malaysia, 2 March 2026

Six Year On: The Economic Impact of Brexit

 

More than six years have passed since the United Kingdom officially left the European Union. Brexit has created structural barriers that further complicate the UK’s economic challenges.  In 2023, the UK remained the only G7 nation that had not recovered to its pre-pandemic level of GDP. Meanwhile, countries within the European Union benefited from healthy intra-EU trade and coordinated recovery efforts, such as the €750 billion NextGenerationEU fund.

 

A significant difference also emerges in business investment. Chronic underinvestment, worsened by Brexit-related uncertainty, has caused UK businesses to be hesitant in adopting new technologies and expanding capacity. For example, foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows dropped by 37 per cent between 2016 and 2022 as multinational companies relocated operations to the EU to preserve access to the single market.

 

Source: https://simple.wikipedia.org

Labour shortages have also strained the UK economy. Before Brexit, businesses could readily meet their labour needs through the EU’s integrated labour market. Since the end of the free movement of labour, critical sectors like agriculture, transport, healthcare and hospitality have all encountered labour shortages, resulting in higher operating costs while limiting output. In contrast, EU economies were able to leverage their integrated labour markets to respond more flexibly to post-pandemic workforce challenges. 

Brexit has also transformed the UK’s trade relationship with its largest trading partner, the EU. Customs checks, rules of origin requirements, and regulatory differences have raised costs and administrative burdens for UK exporters, reducing trade volumes. Sectors dependent on EU markets, such as manufacturing, food exports, and labour-intensive sectors, have been hit harder. Meanwhile, EU countries have maintained smooth trade operations, giving them a competitive advantage. The UK’s sluggish productivity growth, which has persisted since the 2008 financial crisis, stems partly from these issues. Brexit’s structural effects—trade frictions, reduced labour mobility, and low investment—have worsened this problem, causing the UK to trail the EU in productivity improvements. 

Brexit-induced uncertainty has hampered investment, constrained trade, and necessitated costly adjustments in supply chains. Although the Windsor Framework (in relation to Northern Ireland) has alleviated some logistical challenges, it has left broader concerns unaddressed.

Brexit has intensified the UK’s longstanding productivity issues that have persisted since the 2008 financial crisis. Brexit has imposed lasting structural constraints on productivity, such as trade inefficiencies that disrupt just-in-time supply chains, labour shortages caused by ending free movement, increased business costs, and diminished output. These factors lower investment and restrict capital accumulation. Unlike cyclical downturns, Brexit’s negative impact on productivity is enduring and structural. 

Overall, Brexit has been a disaster for Britain. There is no Empire to sell to and no raw materials or cheap labour to extract from. Without a clear plan and outcome, Britain now has potholes on roads, long waiting times at hospitals and low output from farmlands. There is no way back for Britain (to the E.U.). Its best bet is to workout a framework with the Commonwealth.

Reference:

Five Years On: The Economic Impact of Brexit, Hailey Low, Dr Benjamin Caswell, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, 31 January 2025

Same Script, Different Actors

 

From the time the scandal broke in mid-2014 until the 14th general election in 2018, the well-rehearsed mantra was “1MDB is a conspiracy to overthrow the democratically elected government led by Najib Abdul Razak”. 

Recently, a similar conspiracy emerged. The police announced that the wife of a former minister is under investigation following a report alleging that she was plotting to topple the government and Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. (Is toppling an elected government, treason? Then how about the “Sheraton” move?) 

But Na’imah Abdul Khalid, the wife of the late former finance minister Daim Zainuddin,  dismissed the claim of being involved in any form of effort to topple the government.

 

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org

For many, this claim and the side-shows provided a welcome relief from the serious business of corporate mafia, kuil haram (illegal temples), etc, which had been making the headlines. 

The conspiracy theory is a political chameleon, adapting its colours to suit the landscape of the moment. Once deployed to shield Najib from the 1MDB scandal, it now resurfaces to deflect attention from scandals facing the PMX administration. The parallels are unmistakable. Then, as now, foreign actors are cast as the villains. Then, as now, the machinery of law enforcement is mobilised to investigate those who dare to challenge the status quo. Then, as now, the timing is impeccable - and the impression of the masses is that these circumstances are designed to change the conversation when it becomes uncomfortable. 

But the public is not naive. We have seen this script before. We have watched it unravel. And we recognise that when the dust settles, the protagonists of these manufactured crises often fade away. The question is not whether Na'imah conspired with foreign agents or just spoke with public relations personnel, which remains a matter for proper investigation. The question is why, time and again, conspiracy theories become the default refuge of those in power. Until we break free from this cycle of manufactured narratives, we remain prisoners of our own political dysfunction - forever chasing shadows while the real issues fester in the dark. 

If PMX is brave, have a RCI for all corrupt practices since 1998 (after his arrest) and establish where and when we can have our stolen loot back. Ask the former AG – Tommy Thomas to head it. How about that? 

Reference:

Comment: Same script, different actors, endless distractions, R Nadeswaran, Malaysiakini, 1 March 2026

A Record Number of Companies are now ditching old CEOs!

 

The largest public companies in the U.S. are currently switching CEOs at a record pace, with many favouring younger and less experienced appointees over older heads. Roughly one in nine corporate CEOs were replaced at 1,500 of the biggest publicly-traded businesses over the course of 2025, the highest rate of turnover since 2010 when the economy was recovering from the previous year’s financial crash, The Wall Street Journal (“WSJ”) reports.

 

Citing analysis from a report by the executive-recruiting firm Spencer Stuart, the newspaper notes that, in the final quarter of last year alone, companies with a combined market capitalization of $1.3 trillion put new faces in charge, with Verizon and Yum Brands, which owns KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, among those opting for new executive leadership.

 

Source: https://simple.wikipedia.org

 

That trend has continued into 2026, with Walmart, Procter & Gamble and Lululemon among the companies that have moved quickly to make a change at the top in 2026.

 

In February, Disney, HP, and PayPal moved to unveil new bosses on the same day – announcements that were swiftly followed by the news that Greg Foran would be taking over the hot seat at the grocery giant Kroger. Walmart is just one of the major publicly-trade companies to have switched its CEO of late, responding to an ever more complicated landscape.

Businesses currently seeking new CEOs this quarter, or resigned to losing their existing executives, have a combined value of $2.2 trillion, the WSJ reports. Spencer Stuart’s findings suggest that incumbent CEOs are stepping down sooner than in the past and that their replacements are younger than before, with the average age at 54, down from 56 a year previously.

 

More than 80 percent of the 168 people appointed to chief executive positions in 2025 were first-timers who had no prior experience running public companies or major stand-alone enterprises. Two-thirds of that total had never even served on a corporate board.

 

An emblematic example of the trend towards youth is Paul Shoukry, the recently appointed head of the financial services firm Raymond James, who is 42, while his predecessor, Paul Reilly, was 55 when he first took the job in 2010.

Disney’s new CEO Josh D’Amaro, 55, is also considerably younger than the outgoing Bob Iger, who is 75. However, like Shoukry, the new man has considerable experience within the company, having led its $36bn theme-park and cruise unit.

 

While 3 percent of chief executives at top companies are now under 40, according to Spencer Stuart’s data, one is still much more likely to encounter an executive aged 50-59 (64 percent) or over 60 (12 percent).

 

The situation remains uninspiring for women, however, with just nine percent of new appointees to CEO positions female, down from 15 percent a year earlier.

 

The WSJ characterizes the recent changes in hiring practices as “a grand experiment in leadership” in response to a dramatically shifting global landscape, facing up to the post-pandemic challenges and headwinds presented by disruptive political forces and the rise of artificial intelligence.

 

In Malaysia, many GLCs or GLICs are run by those under 50 (and maybe now under 60). Only family businesses have CEOs in the 70s. So, Malaysia must be ahead of the U.S.? No matter, you need the energy of the young and wisdom of the old.

 

Reference:

Record number of companies are ditching old CEOs for younger, less experienced execs,

Joe Sommerlad, Independent, 16 February 2026

Top 30 Ways to Get a Husband

 

Before Covid, Kim Marx-Kuczynski from Madison, Wisconsin shared a 1958 McCall’s article, entitled “129 Ways to Get a Husband,” showing just how much times have changed. Kim believes that everyone who’s currently thinking about a long-term relationship should stay away from this kind of stuff, too. “I think if someone is actively looking for a life-long partner just for the sake of being married, they will end up in a failed relationship whether they legally sever it or not,” she said. “I’d like to read about someone’s attempts at trying out everything on the list though. They would either end up with a degree from Yale, in federal prison for stowing away on a military vessel, or in an intervention meeting with friends who’ve been very concerned with their recent dating profile choices.”

 

 “It’s outdated and absurd and funny, but it had serious intentions,” Kim concluded. “Society has changed so much in the last sixty (now close to 70) years, and this article exemplifies the differences between what our moms and grandmas grew up with compared to ourselves and the coming generations. It’s fascinating.”

 

Of the 129 ways, here are the top 30:

 

 

Reference:

This ‘129 ways to get a husband’ article from 1958 shows how much the world has changed, Mindaugas Balciauskas/BoredPanda, 6 Nov 2018