Time to pop some babies

Let’s heed the advice of our wise YB and have as many babies as the government can afford.

COMMENT

Attention Malaysian women! Please get yourself an obedient guy, tie the knot and start making babies.

Why?

Because the government of Malaysia wants you to.

Clearly that’s the message I got when I read the Women, Family and Community Development Minister’s statement in the media yesterday, urging couples to start reproducing.

“Don’t focus too much on quality of life but have more children for the benefit of the country,” said Minister Rohani Abdul Karim as she warned of the possibility of Malaysia degenerating into a nation of elderly people if Malaysian couples did not start popping babies ASAP.

While I understand her reason in urging the people to have more offspring, I find her statement rather ridiculous.

With all due respect YB, why on earth should anyone give up on the quality of life when the well-being of a nation depends on the quality of life of its people?

Furthermore, I believe most couples are not shying away from starting a family due to their respective careers – it is the burden of caring and raising children that they are worried about. By all means, if the government is willing to sponsor every child born up to the age of 21, I am sure even popping out half a dozen munchkins wouldn’t be an issue.

This means the government would have to bear the cost of milk, diapers, nanny, play school, childcare, housing benefits, affordable family cars, established schools, school transportation, domestic help, tutor, music lessons, martial art classes, art classes, school holiday camps, cost of food, school allowance, dentist and medical fees, yearly school uniforms, books, festival ang pows and other miscellaneous costs.

In fact, perhaps the government of Malaysia should adopt the same approach as South Korea back in 2009 when there was an alarming drop in the birth rate there.

You see, having one of the world’s lowest birth rates (even lower than Japan) at one point, the government of South Korea decided to experiment with an approach among its Ministry of Health staff.

Known as ‘Family Day’, this experiment took place every Wednesday evening, where officials at the Ministry of Health turned off all the lights in the building, forcing staff to go home to their families for some quality time.

The experiment clearly succeeded as some of their staff had additional members in their family within a year of the ‘Family Day’ experiment.

However, since the percentage of Malaysian men with erectile dysfunction (ED) is quite high (47% for men 40 above), and fertility among married Malaysian women is quite low (due to the age factor), I believe declaring one ‘Family Day’ per week is insufficient.

Perhaps we deserve more ‘Family Days’ than the South Koreans – how about having Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays (‘berkat malam Jumaat’) as our humpty dumpty days?

Having said that, I do hope by taking my suggestions into consideration, our government will not have any qualms about the decrease in productivity and increase in federal expenses. After all, we should do anything for the betterment of the country, right YB Rohani?

As a matter of fact, in appreciation of this brilliant idea, we should all start referring to the wise YB’s ministry as the Ministry of Women, Family and Babies. What say you?

I have yet another brilliant idea! Why not have our cabinet ministers lead by example?

And in appreciation of all that ‘hard work’, I propose the government award every successful birth with BB1M – Bantuan Bayi 1Malaysia.

Sounds amazing, doesn’t it?

So come on Malaysia – let’s get working to secure the future of our beloved nation.