Wanita MCA urges Perlis Welfare Dept to help, not hinder, Loh's reunion with children

PETALING JAYA: The Perlis Welfare Department should ensure a smooth handing over of single mother Loh Siew Hong's children, says Datuk Heng Seai Kie.

The Wanita MCA chief said with the Monday (Feb 21) High Court order granting Loh’s bid to regain custody of her three children, there should no longer be any impediment to the mother’s quest to be reunited with her twin daughters and son.

“The MCA women’s wing urges the department to abide with the court’s ruling and ensure a smooth transition during the handover of the children.

“Subterfuge, shuffling the children to different abodes yet withholding such information from the mother, must be a matter of the past and never be replicated,” she said in a statement on Monday.

Heng added that Loh must not be made to endure further heartbreak or the distress of being forcibly separated from her children.

“The department should heed its namesake, the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry and safeguard the rights of the mother; a woman, a single mother.

“It can rebuild its image by taking into consideration the trauma both mother and children have unnecessarily endured, spare them further agony and work towards the reconciliation and healing process.

“In fact, it should provide the necessary support and counselling.

“The mother and her offspring must also be allowed all the privacy without media scrutiny or interference from any authority or organisation – be they religious, enforcement or political parties,” she said.

Meanwhile, Heng urged the department to allow Loh, her daughters and son to catch up with the three lost years.

“Any attempt of forcible removal of the minors should be treated as an abduction, a criminal offence.

“The Women, Family and Community Development Ministry, as well as the Social Welfare Department, must identify the officer(s) who had denied and limited Loh’s visits with her children to only one hour after the media backlash.

“The said officer(s) should be made to undergo counselling to understand that their role is to unite, not divide, not act as Little Napoleons with the authority to defy the 2018 Federal Court ruling on unilateral conversion and the High Court’s judgment awarding custody to Loh,” she said.

Heng added that the Perlis religious authorities who had converted the children by taking only the father's word for it without making any effort to locate and verify the information with Loh should own up to their mistake.

“There is still time for them to offer an olive branch. A goodwill gesture would be for them to support and encourage the reconciliation between mother and children and not raise the issue of the faith professed by the children.

“Let the children decide once they turn 18.

“As there is a dispute over the minor children’s religion, it should be the common religion as agreed upon by the parents when the infants were born,” she said.

On Monday morning, the Kuala Lumpur High Court allowed Loh's habeas corpus application and ordered the children to be released from the care of the Social Welfare Department and back into her custody and care.

After Loh's divorce in 2019, the High Court previously granted her sole custody of the children.

But a series of unfortunate circumstances, including a hospital stay for injuries allegedly due to domestic abuse, caused Loh to lose contact with her children for about three years.

Loh's ex-husband, an Indian-Muslim convert, had then taken the children to Perlis and arranged for them to be converted to Islam, before he was arrested for a drug offence and sent to Kelantan prison.

Loh is a Hindu.