To ensure children’s safety, Govt should legislate to ensure namelist of childcare workers are submitted to Social Welfare Dept for screening

Recently the media exposed news of a school student being sexually assaulted in school (China Press, A2) and an incestuous father who raped his 15 year-old daughter for 2 years (Sin Chew Daily, Pg 30), as well as two robbers who broke into a kindergarten and raped 2 teachers. Ever since the Child Act was amended last year, with the help of the Royal Malaysian Police (PDRM), the Social Welfare Department has set up a centralised database to monitor criminal offenders who have been convicted of violating children. Now I urge the government to further legislate requiring anyone hiring childcare workers to submit a namelist of the persons concerned to the Director of the Social Welfare Department for screening. This is to allow verification to be done, so that all workers hired have no criminal records involving children and thus lower the possibility of re-committing similar offences. 

I also urge that for the time being, the Ministry of Education should ensure all kindergartens and schools vet their potential recruits with the Social Welfare Department, as well as encourage parents to go through the same procedure when hiring baby-sitters, drivers and other childcare workers

According to Mr Ong Kow Ee, the President of the United Chinese School Teachers’ Association, a Chinese primary school male teacher was found to be allegedly sexually assaulting a Year-3 pupil. Because of the lack of reproductive health education, the student concerned had allowed himself to be assaulted for 3 years. This also shows that parents lack relevant knowledge in uncovering a child’s unusual behaviour and allowed such assault to drag on for years, which is regrettable.

The correct sex education covering reproductive health should start from young, enabling students to know when to say ‘No’ to inappropriate touches, and how to protect himself/herself and alert the parents when such incidents befall.

I would like to encourage parents to participate actively in any interactive education programme organised by the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development and non-governmental organisations. This is so they can learn how to identify unusual behaviour in children, and strengthen parent-child communications.

Most of the child victims of sexual offences are familiar with their perpetrators, who are elder to them at home. It is therefore important to teach children on how to protect themselves. Relatives and friends of the victim’s family should also change their mindset about sweeping everything under carpet. The victims, their respective families and schools should not feel ashamed about this. No one should compromise about sexual abuse to prevent such a tragedy from occurring. This is a social responsibility which cannot be shirked.

I also urge the general public to stop stigmatising victims of paedophilia. Only family and societal support will help the victims to move over such pain and trauma.

Datin Paduka Chew Mei Fun
MCA Vice-President
MCA Social Development Committee Chairman

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