KUALA LUMPUR: The Education Ministry and the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry will be in talks to moot sex education in schools to combat involvement of students in sexual habits.
The Women, Family and Community Development Ministry deputy minister Hannah Yeoh said the meeting was important to work out the details on the proposed sex education syllabus.
“The meeting is within the joint committee of the two ministries. If we wait for the sex education to be taught in school, it will take a long time as we also need to train the teachers.
“We are going to look out into ways to reach to students fast. According to statistics, 9% of the students in removal (peralihan) classes are active is sexual habits and this is an alarming figure,“ he said after attending a forum on the increase in child abuse cases at Police Training College, here today.
Yeoh also urged parents to help their children to differentiate between appropriate and inappropriate physical contact.
“We are running out of time as the students active in sexual abuse cases had been increasing and we urge everyone to be proactive in combating this.
“If you do not teach your kids about sex, somebody else will and they will learn the wrong thing. We have internet these days and if it is being used for the wrong reason, it will damage the whole generation,“ she said.
Yeoh also called for more open sharing of data on crimes against children, especially child abuse cases among the relevant agencies.
“Such sharing of information can assist the relevant ministries and agencies in mapping out places and those responsible for such crimes.
“If we can reduce child abuse cases by 20% this year, it would have been good,“ she said.
