Monday, August 23, 2010

Championing women's rights

Permanent Mission of Malaysia to the United Nations

Statement by
The Honourable Mr. Huan Cheng Guan,
Member of Parliament, Malaysia

on agenda items 61(a): Advancement of Women &  61(b): Implementation of the outcome of the Fourth World Conference on Women and the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly at the Third Committee of the 61st Session of the United Nations General Assembly, New York, Wednesday, 11 October 2006


Mr. Chairman,

My delegation associates itself with the statement delivered by the distinguished representative
of South Africa on behalf of the Group of 77 and China on the agenda items under
consideration. We would like to also express our appreciation to the various officials for
presenting us with their respective reports yesterday.

Mr. Chairman,

2. To realise its full potential in pursuing sustainable development, a nation needs to
harness all of its human resources including women.  Given equal opportunity, women have
succeeded in holding high positions and being involved in decision-making processes, both in
the public and private sectors.  We recognize that the vision and leadership of women, their
knowledge and skills, their energy and drive, have benefited their families and entire
communities.  We also recognize that women's progress has contributed significantly to the
overall progress of the nation.

Mr. Chairman,

3. Creating an enabling environment and mainstreaming a gender perspective into the
national agenda are necessary to establish a foundation of equal rights and opportunities for
women and men.  It is in this spirit that the Malaysian Government constantly endeavors to
reform its related mechanisms and institutions to enable them to take active measures to
redress any gender disparities and inequalities. The most significant measure taken by the
Malaysian Government was the formulation of enabling legislations and policies. Malaysia’s
Federal Constitution fully recognizes and safeguards the rights of women. It contains explicit
provisions that prohibit discrimination against women. Malaysia is now in the process of
reviewing existing laws including in the area of Islamic Family Law, to identify and eliminate
any provision that may have a negative impact on women, and will carry out gender impact
analysis of all future draft laws.


4. In order to ensure the equitable sharing in the acquisition of resources, information,
opportunities and benefits of development for men and women, the National Policy for Women
and its Plan of Action were formulated in 1989 and are now being reviewed. Greater
prominence has also been given to promoting and achieving gender equality with the inclusion
of a special chapter called “Women and Development” in Malaysia’s Five Year Development
Plans.

5. With a separate Ministry dedicated to women’s issues, gender mainstreaming and
gender responsive processes across the whole country have been enhanced. The catalytic role
of national mechanisms is further strengthened by the establishment of the Cabinet Committee
on Gender Equality chaired by the Hon. Prime Minister, the setting up of Gender Focal Points
in all Ministries and Government agencies, the inter-ministerial working groups and technical
working groups on critical areas of concerned, as well as the broadening of networking and
sharing of good practices with government agencies, gender centers and experts in and outside
the country.      

Mr. Chairman,

6. Malaysian women are empowered. Laws, policies and programmes have ensured their
access to education, healthcare and employment. Our success at providing Malaysian women
with a high level of education has empowered many of them to hold high-level jobs and
participate in formal decision-making processes, as well as provided them with access to more
resources and better health services. In many instances, they very often exceed expectations of
their potential.

7. Notwithstanding these accomplishments, impediments to the achievement of the goal of
gender equality persist. Negative aspects of culture including sex stereotyping for example,
remains a major hindrance to the advancement of women. In this regard, the Government has
drawn up guidelines to ensure that the content, presentation and graphics in school textbooks
are not gender biased. Sex disaggregated data and statistics are produced at all levels of
education system. Gender centers have been established in almost all universities, where
courses on gender issues are conducted and research in the field of gender are being carried
out.      

Mr. Chairman,

8. In the area of health, an enabling mechanism such as the Advisory and Coordinating
Committee on Reproductive Health was established that has helped to integrate the elements
of reproductive health into the national health programmes. Sex education has recently been
introduced into the school system to inculcate positive values of mutual respect, promote
healthy relationships between boys and girls as well as to prevent abuse and create awareness
of self worth, rights and responsibilities.

9. Similarly, the Government has issued guidelines against sexual harassment in the work
place and has encouraged its implementation in the private sector, as well.


10. Women’s safety and security is a major concern in Malaysia, especially given the rise in
violence perpetrated against women worldwide. The ratio of one in three women subjected to
violence at one point in her lifetime is indeed very disturbing. We welcome the long-awaited
Secretary-General’s in-depth study on all forms of violence against women and remain
confident that its recommendations would indeed become a clear strategy for Member States
and the UN systems to make measurable progress in preventing and eliminating violence
against women. Malaysian Government agencies, in close collaboration with NGOs, have
succeeded in making significant progress in the fight to curb domestic violence and other
crimes against women. One-stop crisis centers, acknowledged in the Secretary-General’s report
as one of the best-known good practices in service provision, have been set up in almost all
hospitals in Malaysia. This service brings together police investigation, medical treatment and
counselling services in one neutral and friendly place.

Mr. Chairman,

11. Monitoring progress and setting benchmarks are essential steps in order for us to
ensure the effectiveness of all our initiatives and the progressive realization of our goals.
Towards this end, the Government of Malaysia has established the Gender Disaggregated
Information System (GDIS), which will help us to track gaps and discrepancies in
implementation, and to plan and formulate new initiatives.

12. At the 35th session of CEDAW in May this year, Malaysia presented a comprehensive
account of the situation of Malaysian women to the committee in its initial and second periodic
reports. My delegation appreciates the constructive dialogue with the members of the
Committee and thanks the Committee for its positive recommendations, which we will
endeavour to implement.

13. Malaysia believes that the sharing of experiences, practices and expertise is essential for
the strengthening of the enabling environment and the acceleration of the success of our
efforts. Malaysia has been participating in multilateral efforts through which such sharing and
learning takes place. Malaysia has been in the forefront of some of these efforts.  During our
Chairmanship of the NAM we hosted a Ministerial Meeting on the Empowerment of Women in
the era of Globalization where Malaysia’s proposal for the setting up of an Institute for the
Empowerment of Women for NAM member countries to be located in Malaysia was adopted.
The Heads of State/Government of NAM countries at the NAM Summit held in Cuba in
September this year endorsed this initiative. We welcome the offer of the Government of
Guatemala to host the next ministerial meeting next year.

14. Finally, Mr. Chairman, the government appreciates the work and the continued support
of many of the women NGOs. Their wealth of experience and inputs has greatly contributed to
the informed decisions and the planning and formulation of policies on women and
development in Malaysia. We hope that such cooperation and partnership will be sustained for
the achievement of our common goal. Malaysia will continue to work with all stakeholders and
support the international and regional initiatives in making this world a better place for women
and all humanity.

I thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Pemuda harapan bangsa, pemudi tiang negara

1. Youth development is very important in any nation-building state.

2. For youth are the future generations to come, we must nurture and enhance their social upbringing by giving them more space and acknowledgements to organize fruitful events.

3. Youth can be rebellious in nature, so we should accommodate their wants and needs and try to cater to their demands, which make sense and deemed logical to expand on.

4. To suppress youth freedom and criticize youth activities as a waste of time will only aggravate the situation further. Today's youth are exposed to the wonders of science and technology, particularly the Internet and beyond..

5. Hence, I urge the Malaysian Government to set up a Youth Empowerment Division (YED) at the Ministry of Youth and Sports to encompass various ideas and suggestions from various youth organizations to contribute their effort as much as possible so that our Malaysian society can benefit as a whole.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Politicians from both sides of the divide have forgotten all these...


·        Eradicate absolute poverty by the middle of the next parliamentary term;
·        Reduce poverty levels in the next parliamentary term to half the levels of 1999;
·        Improve poverty eradication programmes so that they are free from political interference and truly help the poor;
·        Streamline various existing poverty eradication programmes;
·        Narrow the income and wealth gap without infringing on legitimate rights;
·        Develop special development programmes for the poor and the low income in traditional villages, new villages and estates so that they are brought into the mainstream of development and provided with better income sources, jobs and title to land;
·            Allocate the education budget in a fair and equitable fashion, without neglecting any group;
·            Provide more scholarships and other financial assistance on the basis of need;
·            Fix a reasonable minimum monthly wage for daily paid workers;
·            Fix a reasonable monthly wage for estate workers and seriously implement a housing scheme for estate workers;
·            Fix a minimum pension level that will enable pensioners to sustain themselves;
·            Encourage pensioners who are still able to work to contribute towards national development;
·            Enforce strictly laws regarding the rights, interests and dignity of women and abolish laws and regulations that discriminate against women;
·            Protect the rights and welfare of women who have been abandoned by their husbands without any reasonable support;
·            Continue payments of pensions for widows even after they remarry;

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Malaysian Houseman's on call allowance

1. There have been a lot of debates recently about the quality of our housemen in government training hospitals. Housemen in general receive a lot of flak from the general public about their incompetence.

2. To rub salt into wound, some idiotic politicians in their press conferences condemned and criticized house officers as if they deserve the death penalty and in a way that the politicians are always right and the doctors are always wrong.

3. The general perception, even among senior medical staff is that housemen who graduated from overseas especially from the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Czech Republic etc etc (so-called "communist" and former Soviet States) have a different standard of learning (much to the chagrin of the local graduates).

4. But it is known that there are hardworking overseas graduates who are out there to prove "the perception that overseas grads are useless" is not only wrong but biased.

5. The government has plans to churn out many doctors per year to match the rising population but our local institutions simply could not cater to the demand. Although we now have a lot of "shoplots" medical schools (as stated once by the DG of Health), the fact that Malaysia is still short of doctors especially in the rural areas, simply because nobody wants to serve there.

6. If we have more doctors, and encourage them to serve in rural areas with very high incentives and allowances, we might reverse the trend of doctors only focussing on serving the urban areas. Unfortunately, for housemen and even masters training, the government still has to focus on city/urban based hospitals for training, facilities and population purposes.

7. There are a lot of issues about "Malaysian house officers and medical officers in our healthcare system" which one can write a thesis on it alone.

8. I call upon the government to raise the HO's on-call allowance from RM100 to RM110 per call for weekdays and since HOs have to work for longer hours during weekend calls, to increase from RM110 to RM150 at least.

9. Cost of living has gone up tremendously and we cannot rely on the idea of "last time also we were paid peanuts but worked like shit as well". This argument just doesn't make sense anymore.

10. Of course, a doctor's first and foremost role is to serve the rakyat and the patients. But is a mere RM10 to RM40 increase too much to ask for? In fact, our subsidy rationalisation program can afford it from the current "adjustments" recently.

11. The government should pour money into the heartbeat of the nation. The houseman is the heartbeat of our nation, serving selflessly and dedicatedly with full of commitment and compassion.

Friday, August 13, 2010

The Culture of Reading (Budaya Membaca)


1. One of the essence of a developed nation is that its citizens read a lot and not just two pages (not even two books!!) per year like our Malaysians do.



2. This is indeed a national disgrace and there is no way we will be able to achieve high-income economy status if our citizens continue to be ignorant and refuse to read more.


3. There are many factors as to why Malaysians refuse or avoid reading, but certainly too exams-oriented curriculum is one of the major factors. Hence, our students read "just for the sake of passing exams and those who are more capable would be aiming for distinctions."


4. But is that merely enough? Exams are required to be a gauge or measurement of academic achievement but education is a life-long process. Education is a journey, not a destination. As long as we live, we continue to learn.


5. Also, I find the price of our books (especially by foreign publishers) sold in bookstores like MPH, Times and Kinokuniya too expensive and not affordable especially for the poor and lower middle class.


6. I call upon the government to do something to reduce the price of the books in Malaysia so that our society can benefit more from purchasing them. Although the government provides tax relief for these books, obviously the high price of good books is already a huge turnoff for customers.


7. One can always argue that we can borrow from libraries etc. But at this time and age, we need to be fast equipped and well updated about current issues. This simply means that we have to read at a faster pace and always at the forefront of new publications to keep ourselves up-to-date so that we are not left behind.


8. So if the books' prices are low, and Malaysians are encouraged to read more, I believe our country will be developed faster. For now, as long as we still have Malaysians reading "two pages" a year, I guess whatever NEM, GTP, 1Malaysia etc proposed will end up as huge failures, as the basic tenet of development, i.e. education-cum-reading is still not emphasized enough.

Dr Melvin Chin
Malaysian citizen.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Welcome to Perfikir

Hello friends,

Welcome to PERJASA FIKIR or PERFIKIR in short. We aim to serve as PERJASA's think tank and to reflect the real reality on the ground by critical and creative thinking and we strive to promote ideas for the betterment of our community. We appreciate any comments and or feedbacks for the betterment of our future in this beloved country of ours, Malaysia. We feel Malaysia has a lot of potential but we are not using it to our utmost capacity. Hence, we are encouraging the young population to stand up and be counted in their ideas and suggestions to improve our livelihood and secure future generations to come...

Once again, welcome aboard!

Thank you very much.

Sincerely,

PERFIKIR