Singapore plans to end its anti-obesity program in schools, the Education Ministry said, after parents complained that overweight children were being singled out and teased by classmates.
The city-state will scrap the 15-year-old "Trim and Fit" campaign next year and replace it with a holistic program that caters to all schoolchildren instead of just the overweight ones, the ministry said in a statement dated on Monday.
The new holistic campaign will focus not only on raising fitness levels but also mental and social health by promoting a healthy lifestyle, the ministry said. It did not provide details.
PHOTO: AP
Under the current program, overweight children have to do special rigorous exercises during breaks and before and after school until they lose a required amount of weight, in addition to the regular physical education curriculum.
The "Trim and Fit" program reduced the proportion of overweight students from 14 percent in 1992 to 9.5 percent last year, Masagos Zulkifli, senior parliamentary secretary for education, told the Straits Times newspaper in an interview published yesterday.
Nevertheless, the scheme has drawn flak, especially from parents who argued a program that singles out fat children makes them easy targets to be teased by their peers.
Zulkifli acknowledged the program stigmatizes obese students.
"If you want to focus on just overweight children, then no matter what you call it, there will be a stigma associated," he said.
Health officials and educators say school-based intervention effectively targets a generation growing up on fast food, television and computer games, and is integral to the city-state's war against expanding waistlines and ballooning health care costs.
The ministry has disputed a study that linked the "Trim and Fit" scheme to eating disorders among girls, saying such disorders were complex psychological problems that cannot be attributed to a single factor.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including