From 38 civil society organisations and individuals.

Over the years we have had numerous wake-up calls to improve our child protection services, from children dying in childcare centres, children being abused in government and religious schools, to children being abused in government-run welfare homes, and the list goes on.

Yesterday, we heard of the travesty of the alleged abuse of 402 children in 20 welfare homes in Selangor and Negeri Sembilan. This is not just a failure by the staff in the homes but also of our child protection services.

The horrific sexual and physical abuse that has been reported in the past 24 hours is a major wake-up call. It demands that we reevaluate the quality and scope of our child protection services.

As civil society and advocates for child protection, we need to ask the important questions and we need answers – honest and real ones.

Some of the critical questions that need to be answered are as follows:

Question 1:
How many of these centres are registered and known to the welfare department? Has there been a regular time-based registration renewal after an evaluation of centres that are already registered?

Question 2:
For the centres registered or known to the welfare department, how many of them have received visits for an inspection and monitoring? Knowing how many visits were paid to these centres over the years would be useful.

Question 3:
The police statement notes that 41 police reports were lodged from 2011 to 2024 against Global Ikhwan Services and Business Holdings (GISB), which was linked to these homes. How many of these police reports were related to childcare and/or abuse? What action was taken? Did the police notify the welfare department if any childcare issues or abuse were suspected (as is a mandated requirement under the Child Act 2001)?

Question 4:
What is the welfare department’s capacity to support these 402 children who were allegedly abused, in terms of providing them a safe location and providing the extensive psychological support they need? It must be noted here that the children’s homes run by our welfare department are overloaded and understaffed, with poor psychosocial support.

Question 5:
The horrific abuse is just coming to light now but these homes have been operating for years. How many hundreds of other children have gone through their hands over time? What is being done to identify and support them? How many other homes in the country need to be evaluated?

Question 6:
In working with the welfare department, we noticed a reluctance to monitor and enforce child protection policies in religious institutions. Is religion an excuse to not enforce the Child Act?

Are childcare facilities registered under a state religious department and education ministry exempt from the Child Act and the welfare department’s purview? The Child Act is clear – it covers all children and the welfare department is the designated protector for all children in the country.

Question 7:
We are aware that the welfare department is short staffed, so why is the welfare department reluctant to use civil society organisations (CSO) to support its child protection services?

We are distressed with the lack of significant growth in child protection services under the welfare department over many years. How many abused children will it take before we act?

The time has come when we have to draw a line in the sand and say enough is enough. The time is long overdue for an extensive revamp of the welfare department.

We cannot keep running child protection services with staff who are learning on the job. Would you like your children to go to school and be taught by people who are learning on the job? Would you like to go to a hospital and be treated by staff who have no formal training in healthcare?

We need professionals, trained social workers, to take over and run qualified and effective child protection services, where children are given real protection and childcare facilities are monitored effectively.

We urgently need answers to these questions to be made public.

There is a serious trust deficit and we cannot continue to deny our children the child protection services they require. We appeal to our elected representatives to help us obtain these answers and inform the public of the situation.

Remember that this is the tip of the iceberg. There are numerous children’s homes in the country, some registered and most poorly monitored, if at all.

There are confinement centres, child minders, schools and resident care homes that also need to be registered and monitored. We have barely begun.

Unless the legally designated child protectors admit to failure and their limitations, we cannot acknowledge the crisis of services.

We recognise that the welfare department is grossly understaffed but the solution is not to take in more untrained individuals, but to push very hard to employ trained social workers.

This also means making a concerted effort to grow our social worker training in the country. We need minimum standards of care for all children in care situations.

Finally, we need mandatory licensing and monitoring of all childcare facilities.

This statement was endorsed by 15 organisations and 23 individuals.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.