KUALA LUMPUR: The government will put in place temporary measures to curb marriages involving minors until such time that it bans child marriages altogether, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Dr Mujahid Yusof Rawa said yesterday.
He said the standard operation procedure (SOP), which would be finalised this month, was to have short-term measures to tighten the law until the government found a concrete solution to totally ban child marriages.
“We are coming up with the SOP to tighten (the current law) because as long as there is a provision with the permission of the court, you have to respect the law.
“But let me just say here that this is just a temporary measure but the long-term (measure) is very important and we should come to the point where child marriages should be banned,” he said at the Parliament lobby.
Mujahid said the government was now facing some technical problem in banning child marriages because it involved the process of amending the current law.
Mujahid did not rule out the possibility of having an Act, either civil or Syariah, amended in the long term to ban marriages of minors.
In that regard, he said, the government was seeking the views of all stakeholders, including Islamic scholars and Syariah Court judges, to study the matter before it was brought to Parliament.
He said the laws were clear pertaining to marriages involving minors, whereby males who wanted to marry must be at least 18 years old and females, at least 16.
The minister was asked to comment on the recent case where a 41-year-old man in Kelantan had married an 11-year-old girl.
On another matter, Mujahid said he would organise a closed-door meeting between the Mufti of Perlis, Datuk Dr Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin (Dr Maza) and Penang Deputy Chief Minister ll P. Ramasamy over the latter’s alleged link to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) of Sri Lanka.
He said he expected the meeting to be held in Putrajaya.
“I have been in touch with Ramasamy and Maza and I find that a meeting is necessary in view of all the accusations. They agreed to the meeting, provided it is closed-door and I am the mediator.
“I hope the six-eyed meeting will end all the wild accusations. As long as they do not meet, viral messages of the assumptions will continue,” he said. – BERNAMA
