These women, majority of whom are single parents and sole breadwinners in the family, said the member of Parliament for Bintulu Tiong King Sing today, adding that they are receiving the financial assistance to start small scale or home-based business through Ikhtiar Loan Scheme (SPI) and Single Parents' Special Scheme (SKIT).

He said these loans have helped economically marginalized women tremendously especially single parents to start anew in their life. By rejecting a small capital start-up, we hope these women would be able to start their own business to support the family, he added.

He said the SPI, coordinated by the Rural Development Ministry with the collaboration of Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia (AIM), which provided micro credit to the recipients.

While SKIT helps women especially single parents both in rural and urban areas to generate higher family incomes, he said after receiving response from Women and Family Development Ministry at the Parliament question-and-answer session yesterday.

Tiong had earlier asked the Women and Family Development Minister to reveal whether the ministry had specific development planning strategies for Sarawak rural women and single parents, majority of whom had been backward in education and were living in poverty and ignorance although they have been the backbone to the majority of voters who supported the goverment.

He said the Women and Family development Ministry had worked out an intermediary mechanism with the grassroots level through Women Affairs' (HAWA) consultative committees at the State and District levels to tackle the problems faced by women in rural areas.

He said the ministry had always taken a serious view over the issues on the development of women, as what had been articulated in the National Women Policy.  

The current and long term planning developments for women requires a strong commitment especially in terms of allocation and inputs so that effective programs could be implemented, he said.
 
Based on the 1999 Household Income research, he said there were about 711,013 women, who were the family's sole breadwinners, in Malaysia in which 68,513 (9.6 percent) of the economically marginalized women were from Sarawak.

In view of this, he said the government will continuously give emphasis and concentration on the importance of women and single parents in the state especially in strategizing effective planning developments.

This is especially so in mapping out socio-economic development strategies, which include providing better education, health and generation of higher income, he added.

Among the strategies that had been in place, he added, was the channeling of allocation from the Ministry to the Sarawak Women Bureau to carry out various activities including training programs in entrepreneurship, skills development, Information and Communication Technology, motivation and community develpment in all divisions and districts in Sarawak.

This is to ensure women including single parents are well equipped with knowledge, know-how and are able to honed their skills through these multi-level and multi-pronged training programs.

"In fact, to encourage women to involve in small-scale agro-based industries, joint efforts are being taken with the Agriculture Ministry to get them involved in frozen food processing ventures, which would be implemented in Sarawak if they are viable," he said.

Tiong also said the ministry was working with the Rural Development Ministry to provide skills training classes to the economically marginalized women in Sarawak through its existing skills training centres in the state.

The skills training centres are at two food processing centers, two garments production units, 32 apparel workshops and 11 handicraft workshops. Besides these, at least 195 groups of women are being trained in various community centres to undergo harmonious family education program, he said...END WITH NO PHOTO by Jacky Chan.