Najib Abdul Razak has taken a sarcastic swipe at Education Minister Maszlee Malik's idea to emulate Japan by providing free nutritious breakfast for children from families in the B40 low-income group, pointing out the similarity to the already existing Supplementary Food Programme.

He advised Maszlee, who is on a three-day visit to Japan, to "spend more time understanding the operations of his ministry" instead.

"People say when you travel far, you widen your perspective. Perhaps it is by travelling to Japan that he (Maszlee) was able to think up this excellent idea.

"But perhaps because he studied (the idea) too well, he overlooked the fact that the Supplementary Food Programme has been around since 1979 and provided by the Education Ministry.

"Perhaps he was too preoccupied with the colour of students' school uniforms to notice that his own Pakatan Harapan government has slashed the allocation for the Supplementary Food Programme in the 2019 Budget," he said in a Facebook post today, referring to the education ministry's plans to change the colour of school shoes from white to black, to be enforced in 2021.

Najib stated how the food programme, conducted by the then BN government, allocated RM2.50 per student per day for underprivileged students in peninsular Malaysia and RM3.00 per student in Sabah, Sarawak and Labuan.

Maszlee has yesterday announced that his ministry was studying the idea of the free breakfast for children from low-income households which he stated he thought of, following a visit to the Itabashi Daiichi Elementary School, in Itabashi-ku, a special ward within the Tokyo metropolis.

The former premier further said that Maszlee need not "Look East” to know of the existing food programme, taking a further dig at Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad's popular policy first used in the 80s but which the latter has revived upon his return to the helm under the Harapan government, in reference to the Malaysia-Japan cooperation.