MELAKA: Chinese clan association Eng Choon Association Melaka is offering its members RM1,200 cash incentive for every newborn baby beginning 2025.

The association’s deputy president Datuk Lee Shiann said the incentive, scheduled to start next year, is to encourage its members to have babies in a bid to increase the Chinese population of Malaysia.

Members of Eng Choon Association Melaka who have a baby in 2025 will be eligible to receive RM100 a month for 12 months.

For delivering twins, the members will receive RM200 a month, he said.

“We have received positive feedback from members with regards to the cash incentive,” Lee said at the association’s 224th anniversary dinner, of which he was the organising chairman.

Apart from receiving cash incentive, the association also promises that the babies will be given priority for study at prestigious Chinese primary and secondary schools set up by the association in Melaka.

Statistics show that the Chinese population of Malaysia has been declining steadily over the past 20 years. Today, the country’s second largest ethnic group only makes up 22.4 per cent of the total population.

“The trend is worrying,” said Lee.

The Eng Choon Association in Melaka was one of many Chinese clan associations in the country set up to look after the welfare of Chinese migrants who left China then.

Set up in 1800, Eng Choon Association Melaka has been looking after the welfare of migrants from Yongchun County in China’s Fujian Province, who settled down in Melaka.

Eng Choon is the Hokkien pronunciation for Yongchun, referring Chinese Malaysians with ancestry from the county in Fujian Province, China.

Chinese Malaysians whose ancestors came from Eng Choon County are urged to join the association to enjoy the cash incentive.

Eng Choon Association Melaka is not the first to offer such incentive.

The Federation of Kwong Siew Association of Malaysia offered to pay RM2,000 to its members with a fourth child or more back in 2000.

The Cantonese-speaking clan is believed to be the first local Chinese clan association to have come up with a cash incentive scheme to help check the falling birth rates among Chinese Malaysians.