Cabinet should be ashamed of its failure to present a Bill to provide for heavy penalties against pimps in the recent meeting of Parliament

Message by Parliament Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjung, Lim Kit Siang, at the DAP Nasional Wanita dinner held at Kum Leng Restaurant, Kuala Lumpur on Saturday, 7th August 1993

Cabinet should be ashamed of its failure to present a Bill to provide for heavy penalties against pimps in the recent meeting of Parliament

The Cabinet should be ashamed of its failure to present a Bill to provide for heavy penalties against pimps in the recent meeting of Parliament.

If the Government can amend the Malaysian Constitution at every meeting, there is no reason why the Government had failed all these years to take tough legislative measures to address the grave problem of pimps who are the primary cause of missing women and girls, and their being trapped in a life of vice.

As Minister for National Unity and Social Development, Datuk Napsiah Omar must take full personal responsibility for the failure to present a Bill to impose heavy penalties on pimps in the recent meeting of Parliament.

Women’s groups have proposed mandatory whipping for pimps, but Napsiah Omar had said that there were “certain factors” that might prevent mandatory whipping for pimps from being implemented.

Napsiah Omar must explain what are these ‘certain factors’ which prevent mandatory whipping for pimps, when in the recent Parliament, the Penal Code had been amended to introduce whipping for white-collar crimes.

To make amends for the long inexcusable delays in presenting the Bill to impose heavy penalties on pimps to Parliament, Napsiah Omar should ensure that the Bill is presented for first reading on the first day of the Budget meeting of Parliament in October, so that
it could be debated and approved before the presentation of the 1994 Budget.

Furthermore, Napsiah should make public the bill to give all interested organisations at least one month to study its contents before it is presented to Parliament for first reading in October.

DAP MPs will be asking for a meeting with Napsiah Omar to impress on her the urgency and importance that there should be no further delay for the introduction of such a law to check and wipe out pimps living on the immoral earnings of innocent girls forced into a life of vice.