A recent survey on Malaysians’ awareness towards scams finds the respondents urging the government to do more in educating the masses on fraud prevention.
The survey was carried out by Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman’s (UTAR) Tun Tan Cheng Lock Centre, Universiti Teknologi Mara’s (UiTM) Academy of Contemporary Islamic Studies in Perlis and Centre for Malaysian Chinese Studies (Huayan).
“Out of the 991 respondents, 93% are expecting the government to provide awareness programmes and 70% call for the need of prevention campaign through media channels,” Tun Tan Cheng Lock Centre for Social and Policy Studies chairman Dr Chin Yee Mun.
Recommendations to increase public awareness include producing educational materials, creating social media campaigns and organising educational programmes such as workshops and seminars in local communities, schools and colleges.
As of now, the government’s new National Scam Response Centre (NSCR) which was set up on Oct 12 last year, has received a total of 58,980 calls seeking help.
Out of the figure, 13,756 are related to cheating, Federal Commercial Crime Investigation Department director Datuk Seri Ramli Mohamed Yoosuf says.
The NSRC had also initiated 7,178 investigations under the Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA) involving 522 accounts and had frozen RM64.75 million of funds.
Ramli says the accumulated losses exceed RM161 million.
“Through collaboration with banks and financial agencies, NSRC has successfully frozen RM30.54 million of capital which is 19% of the total losses incurred.”
Nevertheless, Dr Chin says 95% of the respondents agree government should allocate more resources and funding to law enforcement agencies to investigate and combat scam park cases.
“A majority of respondents also want the government to set up agencies to help Malaysians identify the veracity of job offers in countries known to house scam parks, provide protection for whistleblowers and incentives for reporting suspicious activities.
“From the survey, it is also found that 71.61% of the respondents want the government to emphasise control on access to countries known to have scam parks.”
Better still, 92.3% also say that the government should hold diplomatic engagements with other countries to encourage cooperation against the criminal network.
Meanwhile, UiTM Academy of Contemporary Islamic Studies’ senior lecturer Dr Syaimak Ismail says a specific law on this new trend on human trafficking should be drafted to effectively mitigate the problem.
“A special enforcement body should be formed to draft the laws. This is important to stem the problem at its roots,” she says.
“While not included in the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons (the Trafficking in Persons Protocol) explicitly, exploitation in criminal activities has been incorporated into domestic trafficking legislation by many countries around the world,” UNDOC notes.
In South-East Asia, only Malaysia has incorporated this form of exploitation into their domestic legislation, the agency adds, stressing: “The people rescued from the scam compounds are, for the most part, victims of trafficking for forced criminality and should be treated as such. Victims of trafficking should be able to access protection and assistance, reintegration support, and justice, which in the current context, is largely being denied to victims.”
Concurring, Syaimak says it is crucial that we regularly review and update the the anti-trafficking laws laws to keep them current and effective, including to ensure that clear definitions of trafficking penalties for offenders, and protections for victims keep up with the evolving crime.
The survey is jointly supported by Media in Arms.
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