Malaysian scholars and rights groups agreed on the need for stiffer actions, including jail terms, against non-complying fathers who abandon their financial obligation towards their children after divorce, reports said on April 22.
“Those in authority must consider the best way to defend the rights and welfare of the children,” said Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin, Mufti of the northern state of Perlis. “The important thing is to see that justice is done.”
Attendants of a one-day forum, sponsored by Malaysia’s top feminist group Sisters in Islam (SIS) on April 21 called for new measures against fathers who do not provide alimony and child-support payments. The forum marked the launch of the SIS helpline concerning alimony cases.
SIS, an independent NGO, regretted that many Malaysians who divorce their wives do not provide for their children. The rights group said women who were unable to get their ex-husbands to pay child support comprised nearly one-third of the 214 complaints brought to the group’s legal clinic. Those cases are “only a small fraction of what is happening.”
Ivy Josiah, executive director of Women’s Aid Organisation, called for setting up an institution to deduct alimony from the ex-husband’s income. Other proposals included not allowing men to re-marry as long as they have not settled the alimony and setting up a child support agency that empowers the authorities to go after non-complying fathers.