Business owners, homemakers pan govt propaganda chief's cost-of-groceries post

As early as 4.30am, Jai, the owner of a small restaurant in Taman Melawati, Kuala Lumpur, gets busy prepping meals for the day.

Loyal customers frequent Jay's humble eatery for breakfast even before the sun rises. As they dig into their roti canai, they watch the capital city start to bustle with daily activities.

Some can be heard lamenting about having to fork out more for everyday items as the cost of living continues to climb, despite the government's recent claim that the monthly kitchen expenses for a family is about RM400 and around RM300 for single individuals.

A couple of customers with whom MalaysiaNow spoke said that the calculations given were inaccurate, and that even the type and number of each item mentioned were unreasonable.

Jai, for one, said it was unrealistic to think that people only buy items like rice, eggs, chicken and cooking oil.

He pointed out how other kitchen items like vegetables, flour, salt and sugar, as well as necessities like baby diapers and formula, sanitary napkins and medication, had been excluded.

"How much is considered enough? In today's economic climate, RM1,000 a month barely covers the cost of food for a family. It's a different story if you're extravagant," he said.

On Thursday, Mohammad Agus Yusoff, the director-general of the Department of Community Communications (J-KOM), became the target of social media users over an infographic showing that monthly kitchen expenses for a family of four amount to only RM397.80 or RM99.45 per week.

The expenses include two 2kg chickens for RM37.60, two 10kg bags of rice at RM38 a bag, two 1kg bottles of cooking oil for RM13.80, a carton of 30 eggs for RM14, two jumbo loaves of bread for RM8.60 and a 10kg cylinder of gas for RM19 per month.

The post, which received over 12,000 comments from internet users, has since been deleted.

Jeyanthi from Brickfields, Kuala Lumpur, brushed off the estimation, saying that the prices of almost all kitchen items have increased significantly.

The homemaker said that even RM400 is not enough to meet the weekly needs of her family, adding that RM200 to RM250 for fresh ingredients alone is insufficient.

She said this does not include dry goods such as chilli and vegetables, which would then take the total expenses beyond RM400 a month.

"I usually shop for groceries twice a month, but if they run out, I would go out and buy again," she said.

Jeyanthi said that she allocates RM500 a month for dry goods and RM1,000 for fresh groceries, which means she spends about RM250 every week.

Another homemaker, Rada, said the frequency with which she buys raw items for her family does not align with J-KOM's figures.

The mother of four, whose household consists of six people, said she needed to buy more than two whole chickens a week.

"A whole chicken could be finished during lunch," she said. "For dinner, I have to think about what else I can cook."

She added that she allocates an additional RM250 per week to buy fresh chicken and fish from the market.

"Buying chicken every week isn't feasible. So we make do with canned sardines and eggs," she said.

Back at Jai's eatery, a customer known as Bakhtiar challenged the ministers, calling on them to sustain a livelihood based on the budget proposed by J-KOM.

He said that the budget could only work if they lived the way foreign labourers who share space in workers' quarters do.

"I assume they (the ministers who proposed the prices) may have lived with Bangladeshi workers or construction workers; that's why the prices make sense to them.

"Yes, those workers might eat rice and be healthy, but maybe one fried egg is just enough for sustenance," he added.