KUALA LUMPUR: The Women, Family and Community Ministry will engage the Education Ministry soon on how to create a sex education subject in schools.
Women, Family and Community Minister Hannah Yeoh said records and statistics show that nine per cent of the total number of students in remove classes nationwide are sexually-active.
She said she will personally meet Deputy Education Minister Teo Nie Ching in the near future to facilitate the talks.
“For now, all quarters should extend their cooperation and share ideas on how to tackle the problem of sexual activity among students.
“To me, the figure that nine per cent of remove class students are sexually-active is a large one,” she said at the closing of a child abuse forum at the police college in Kuala Lumpur.
She said the meeting between her ministry and the Education Ministry could lead to a solution in ensuring that sex education can be implemented at all school levels.
She said failure to educate children on sex and leaving them to learn for themselves through social media could possibly ruin a generation.
“In this modern age, those as young as 13 already know about sex but they need to be given correct information.
“As such, sex education is important in our bid to deliver the correct message to our children,” she said.
Meanwhile, Yeoh said studies showed that mothers form the majority of abusers in child abuse cases in Malaysia, with 7,564 cases recorded nationwide between 2013 and last June.
The number of cases where fathers were the abusers numbered 5,012.
“This is a shocking finding as mothers are supposedly the ones closes to their children. Although existing laws are enough to tackle child abuse, prevention is the best approach to reduce the statistics,” she said.
Yeoh said the ministry is working with various agencies and non-governmental organisations to gather ideas on the best way to tackle the problem.
Meanwhile, she said her ministry, together with the courts, police and Prisons Department, are devising a system to perform online screening on those who work with children, or those who plan to.
The system, she said, is expected to be finalised by the first quarter of the year.