KUALA LUMPUR: The Senior Citizens Bill will be presented to Parliament within the next six months.
Women, Family and Community Development Minister Datuk Seri Nancy Shukri said the ministry would push for the Bill to be tabled soon, as there was an urgent need for such a law.
She said the Bill had been delayed because stakeholders wanted their views heard first.
“Consultation was ongoing because there were always more views to be heard. When we were about to send it to the Attorney General for approval, there was still additional input.”
While Nancy said this was a good sign as it showed that people were concerned about senior citizens, she stressed that there was an urgent need for the law.
She said the draft was ready and was being reviewed before submission to the Attorney General.
Nancy said the Bill was important to curb children abandoning their elderly parents.
“We also need more professionally trained people, including Welfare Department officers, to take care of the elderly.”
Nancy said the government was also studying various forms of assistance that could be provided to private homes and facilities that care for the elderly.
On elderly people sent to private homes, she said the ministry had been discussing ways to support such facilities, though there were technical issues to address.
She said a proposal would be sent to the Finance Ministry.
Malaysia is projected to become an aged society by 2048, when the population aged 65 and above will exceed 14%.
She said this after opening the seminar and stakeholder consultation titled “Malaysian Care Ecosystem – Assuring the Quality of Caregivers” at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre yesterday.
The event was jointly organised by the National Council of Women’s Organisations Malaysia and the Faculty of Medicine of Universiti Malaya.
Earlier, Nancy said the government intended to train 2,000 professional caregivers for the elderly this year.
“We must move from seeing caregiving as informal labour to recognising it as a skilled and respected profession.”
Nancy said caregivers were not merely helpers but frontline pillars of human well-being, dignity, and national resilience.
“Caregiving in Malaysia – as in most of the world – falls disproportionately on women. Our female labour force participation rate stands at just 56.6%, compared with more than 83% for men.
“And 63% of women outside the workforce cite housework and caregiving as the primary reason,” she said.
Globally, she said, the scale was staggering, with more than 708 million women locked out of economic participation because of unpaid care responsibilities.
“This is not a personal choice but a systemic failure, and addressing it is both a gender-equality imperative and an economic imperative.”
