The Women, Family and Community Development Ministry is working on improving the quality of life for the elderly, said its minister Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail.
This will be done through organising activities and programmes targeted for them as well as by introducing senior citizen-friendly facilities beginning with the Perak town of Taiping.
“We will soon have an ageing society and that’s why we need to organise programmes for the elderly. Today, we often see people neglecting their parents once the latter grow old. The kids are busy working and there is no one at home.
“These elderly people used to have positions (in workplaces and society) but now they just sit at home. I have visited several homes and found some of them to be depressed and lonely.
“We need to learn from countries like Japan where many elderly people die alone. The ministry is working to address the issue so such things don’t happen here,” she said during a recent media interview to mark the anniversary of Pakatan Harapan’s first year in government.
Wan Azizah added her ministry will “tailor-make” programmes for the elderly based on their interests.
“If a pakcik wants to go to the mosque, we won’t ask him to go for Zumba classes,” she quipped.
Another initiative was to turn Taiping into an elderly-friendly city, an initiative being undertaken in partnership with the UN Development Programme (UNDP).
“Taiping was chosen because its demography shows many elderly living there. We are building age-friendly facilities and conducting some studies there which are being funded by the UNDP,” she said.
Cybersecurity push
Commenting on how her ministry wanted to take care of Malaysians “from cradle to the grave”, Wan Azizah noted how they had in the past year introduced a child sex offenders registry and allocated RM45 million in allowances for homemakers through the i-Suri programme.
It had also tried its best to convince individual states to change their laws to ban child marriages, even meeting with the Conference of Rulers on this issue.
However, she maintained that the federal government was restricted by the fact that amendments to state religious laws remained the jurisdiction of state governments and the rulers.
Moving forward, Wan Azizah said she wanted to focus on providing parenting programmes for young families and introducing phase two of the i-Suri programme.
Meanwhile, as for her role as chair of the National Security Council, she said the body was now engaging with countries like Russia, Japan and Australia to improve cybersecurity in the country.
In line with this, the role of the National Cybersecurity Agency will be enhanced with a national Cyber Security Strategy now in the works, she added. - Mkini
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