KUALA LUMPUR: The Women, Family and Community Development Ministry has undertaken a host of initiatives to ensure that the welfare of single mothers as well as children are cared for during the Movement Control Order 3.0 (MCO 3.0) period.
The Women Development Department said these include food basket aid, job placement and entrepreneurship programmes as well as engagement sessions with the community to establish solutions.
Its director-general, Dr Zurina Abdul Hamid, said the government is attentive to the needs and plight of single mothers during the MCO 3.0 period.
"Beginning this year, (the department) launched a collaboration with the Credit Counselling and Debt Management Agency to provide financial education and help the target group manage their finances.
"To empower entrepreneurial development among women, the department has steered those interested towards agencies under the Entrepreneur Development and Cooperative Ministry for training.
"Those who qualify would be offered financial aid by agencies skilled in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
"The department has also collaborated with a number of agencies under the Human Resources Ministry on job placement initiatives to connect interested parties to potential jobs," she said.
Zurina said as a result, the Women's Career Fair was held online on March 9 and 10 this year with the cooperation of TalentCorp.
The fair saw the involvement of companies such as Lotuss (formerly Tesco) and Nestle, offering 400 job opportunities.
"A total of 333 women from the B40 bracket were successfully connected to job opportunities via this platform," she said.
Zurina said this was followed up by the Kelantan-level Women's Career Fair on March 29 and 30, which involved 15 companies offering 586 potential jobs.
"A total of 311 B40 women were successfully connected to job opportunities as a result," she said.
She said to boost the social support system among this segment of the community, the ministry conducted engagement sessions with 38 single mothers' associations to obtain feedback in order to craft subsequent strategies and targeted programmes for single mothers.
The ministry, she said, has also formed its Skuad Waja, trained volunteers who are tasked with assisting women in a psychosocial context, especially on domestic abuse, drug mules, exploitation and others.
Zurina said as per the National Recovery Plan (NRP), no physical events can be held until the country enters Stage Four of the recovery stage, estimated to be by the end of October.
"As such, we have initiated plans with the Social Security Organisation (Socso) to organise more Women's Career Fairs at state-level on an online basis.
"As of May 31, the department has conducted 574 women's empowerment programmes nationwide involving 237,058 participants." - NST
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