I welcome the announcement of RM13 million and more manpower to tackle violence against women and children by the Finance Minister Datuk Seri Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz in tabling the 2022 Budget on Friday (29 Oct).
The move of allocating a specific sum to the federal police’s Sexual, Women and Child Investigations Division known as D11 will see the creation of 100 new appointments in the unit.
The allocation will help in achieving a more effective enforcement of the law.
Not having sufficient manpower in enforcement has always been cited as one of the main reasons which leads to lack of enforcement or weak enforcement in tackling gender-biased violences.
With a specific sum announced by the Finance Minister to D11, I hope the allocation will end the scenario of not giving gender-based violence priority and urgency.
The government must not just stop at increase fundings for the police and creation of additional manpower but to tackle the gender-biased violence at its root cause.
Please do not overlook the support to be extended to victims.
Besides local social support centres and working with non-governmental organisations to increase the number of shelters for victims, the government should look into the setting up of a family court system to deal with family matters especially domestic violence and incest.
Such cases are never given specific attention and it is time for the government to have gender mainstreaming in budget planning and the 12 th Malaysian Plan as these are platforms to address gender inequality.
Gender-biased violence is often due to power inequality between men and women.
Gender mainstreaming, a strategy to achieve equality between women and men, should be applied in policy to increase women representation in politics, parliament, state assemblies, executives, cabinet and the exco.
Appointing one female director in all public listed companies beginning Sep 1, 2022 is a good move. It is not too much to ask for 30% of board directors to be filled up by female since female also made up of half of the population in Malaysia.