Malay rights defender Perkasa today claimed that there is no such thing as students starving, just that some are unused to the hard life.

"I agree with (Youth and Sports Minister) Khairy Jamaluddin that there are no students starving," Perkasa president Ibrahim Ali said at a press conference in Kuala Lumpur today.

"There is an abundance of food in Malaysia. What may have happened is there are students from poor families who have education loans which are not enough because of the rising cost of living, while some have only enough to pay for tuition fees, with no allowance for subsistence," reasoned Ibrahim.

He said that this is because some students are not accustomed to living on their own.

The former Pasir Mas parliamentarian argued they faced challenges in managing their expenditure as they now have to pay for everything on their own.

"Thus they can no longer eat the proper three meals a day, but had to make do with one meal per day because of rising cost of living as they also have to pay rent and other essentials," he said.

Earlier, Khairy had denied claims that there are students in Malaysia truly starving, despite reports that more and more students had to skip meals as cost of living continues to sky-rocket.

The youth and sports minister has been lambasted by student groups who said that as someone born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he would not know what it is like to live a life less privileged.