PUTRAJAYA: The government is rolling out a National Strategy Plan in Handling the Causes of Child Marriage.
Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail said the five-year plan had 17 strategies and 58 programmes to be undertaken by 61 agencies.
"The main purpose of these programmes are to raise awareness, change perception and stigma related to underaged marriage issues in the society," she said after launching the strategy here today.
Also present were Deputy Women, Family and Community Development Minister Hannah Yeoh, Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Fuziah Salleh and Deputy Education Minister Teo Nie Ching.
Dr Wan Azizah, who is also Women, Family and Community Development Minister, said a steering committee would be formed to monitor the implementation of the plan, which would be led by the ministry.
She said the plan would address six factors: low household income and poverty; lack or no access to sexual reproductive health education and parenting skills; lack of access to education and poor school attendance; stigma and social norms that dictate that underaged marriage is the best solution to address problems; loose laws that provide for marriage under the age of 18; and coordination of marital data and underage divorce.
On other efforts that were carried out to start the ball rolling in addressing underaged marriage, Dr Wan Azizah said the Syariah Judicial Department of Malaysia had come up with a standard operating procedure for marriage applications involving minors as reference nationwide.
The National Population and Family Development Board, she added, gave reproductive health services, including counselling and health screening to teenagers who had had premarital sex.
The deputy prime minister also said the government had agreed to introduce a Reproductive and Social Health Education programme for children as young as preschoolers in an effort to combat sexual crimes against children and underage marriages.
It was reported a total of 968 marriages involving non-Muslim children and adults and 147 marriages between children were registered nationwide in 2017.
Meanwhile, a total of 5,362 applications for permission to proceed with Muslim child marriages were registered with the syariah courts between 2013 and 2017.
Sarawak was reported to have the largest number of applications at 918, followed by Sabah at 793, Kelantan (793), Johor (440), Terengganu (407), Kedah (389), Selangor (385), Pahang (354), Perak (266), Federal Territory (178), Negeri Sembilan (155), Perlis (107), Melaka (91), and Penang (86).
On tackling the laws, Yeoh said they would involve laws involving the Muslims, non-Muslims, customary marriages and the Orang Asli.
Last Friday, Attorney General Tan Sri Tommy Thomas was reported as saying that the government was looking into a proposal to raise the minimum marriage age for Muslims from 16 to 18.