The government will use the Unicef report to improve on programmes directed for children as the study even found that treatment for kids even varies between ethnicity.
.
PETALING JAYA: The Economic Planning Unit (EPU) will use a United Nations (UN) study on Malaysian children to draft special programmes for children under the 11th Malaysia Plan.
EPU director general Dr Rahamat Bivi Yusoff said the study, conducted over a year by the UN Children’s Fund (Unicef), would be useful for the government to improve on its work to develop a nurturing environment for children.
“Investing in children is investing in the future of the country. This report is timely and would be enormous benefit in terms of information and guide us better in the formulation of the 11th Malaysia Plan,” she said in Putrajaya yesterday.
She said several deficiencies were highlighted in the UN report which would add value to the planning of the 11th Malaysia Plan.
The Unicef report said Malaysia has made significant progress in implementing the rights of children, but its application is uneven across the states.
The study found that the treatment of children may vary according to which state they live in or whichethnic group they belong to. The study even found there were differences in the application of rights between boys and girls.
“This study is a good baseline for the Malaysian government to look into the discrepancies highlighted here. Further analysis of existing data sets is necessary to figure out the real reasons for the discrepancies,” Unicef’s planning, monitoring and evaluation specialist Roumiana Gantcheva said.
Gantcheva, who conducted the year-long study in collaboration with the Statistics Department, said the Malaysian government needs to collect more data on the 9.5 million children living in Malaysia.
The statistical report assessed four aspects of children rights, namely right to adequate standard of living, right to life and basic health, right to early childhood development and education as well as right to identity, care and protection.
Unicef representative to Malaysia Wivina Belmonte said Malaysia is on track to meet its targets of most of the Millenium Development Goals, however, it seriously has to make some adjustments to its current practices and policies on children’s rights and equity.
She said child poverty has declined from 29.3% to 9.4% between 1989 and 2007, yet disparities between states are persistent and Sabah (31%), Kelantan (15%) and Terengganu (12%) were addressed as states with higher number of child poverty. Least reported is Selangor with a 2% child poverty rate.
She said overall reduction in child mortality rates is accompanied by persisting disparities among states and among population groups whereby young boys (infant and below five) face higher risk of death than young girls.
On the education part, she said nationwide school enrolment has been sustained at high levels but disparities between states persist. FMT
No comments:
Post a Comment