KUALA LUMPUR: The Women, Family and Community Development Minister is holding discussions with the Home and Finance ministries to implement mandatory HIV testing for non-Muslim couples seeking to get married.
Its minister, Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail said since non-Muslim marriages fell under civil law and such testing would involve costs, discussions needed to be held with both the other ministries before any steps could be taken.
“Right now, there is no law which compels non-Muslim couples seeking to get married to go through HIV testing. In principle, we support such a move but it involves costs and civil laws, so we will have to come to an agreement,” she said at the Dewan Negara.
At present, only Muslim couples are required to go through HIV testing prior to marriage.
Dr Wan Azizah, who is deputy prime minister, said discussions were also still ongoing over the proposal to make it mandatory for non-Muslim couples to go through a pre-marriage course.
She said, based on discussions with interfaith councils, the proposal was being supported.
However, she said, there were some non-governmental organisations which were still not fully in agreement as to how such a course could envelope various races and religions.
Meanwhile, on the level of accessibility to sexual crimes data kept by the police, Dr Wan Azizah said the data was not open to the public for fear that it could be manipulated by irresponsible individuals.
However, she admitted that such data would be important to the public, especially women, so that they could be armed with information which could possibly protect them from attacks.
On the number of women who are now in decision-making positions in policy and politics, she said as of Friday, the number of board members in companies incorporated under the Finance Ministry stood at 17.4 per cent, or 43 of 247 board members.
Dr Wan Azizah said, based on information from Bursa Malaysia, as of September this year, 23 per cent of the top 100 public listed companies had women board members.
“In the Dewan Rakyat, there are 32 female members of parliament, or 14.41 per cent of the total, compared to 23 women before this.
“In the various state legislative assemblies, there are 62 assemblywomen, or 12.8 per cent of the 505 state seats, compared to 58 women (11.5 per cent) before this,” she said. -Bernama