Ministry preparing Cabinet paper on minimum marriageable age — Fatimah

MIRI: The Ministry of Welfare, Community Well being, Women, Family and Childhood Development is preparing a Cabinet paper on the minimum marriageable age before tabling it in the Sarawak State Legislative Assembly for debate a nd endorsement.

Minister Dato Sri Fatimah Abdullah said this follows the resolution of the roundtable discussion by the ministry on Aug 8 on minimum age of marriage and Sarawak Child Adoption Ordinance.

“We are at the stage of preparing a Cabinet paper on the issue. Following the Cabinet paper, then there would be preparation to table it in the State Legislative Assembly,” she told The Borneo Post.

“However, the permissible age under Adat Istiadat needs to be discussed in the various cultural symposiums of each ethnic group to come up with a concrete resolution on minimum age of marriage,” she said.

Customary marriage is one of three types of marriage recognised in Sarawak, along with civil marriage and marriage according to Islamic law. However, native customary laws of the state’s various ethnic groups are currently silent on marriageable age for girls.

Fatimah was commenting on whether Sarawak intended to raise the minimum age of marriage for girls to 18 years as tabled in the Selangor State Legislative Assembly earlier this month.

Fatimah said the roundtable discussion was attended by ethnic group leaders, representatives of NGOs, members of Women and Family Council Sarawak, Sarawak Islamic Religious Department (Jais), Malaysia Islamic Religious Department( Mais), officers from the National Registration Department and district officers.

Also present to give the legal advice were officers from the State Attorney General’s Office.

The meeting resolved that the minimum age for both civil and customary marriage under Adat Istiadat is 18 years, with the absolute minimum age for marrying at 16.

The Selangor State Legislative Assembly on Sept 5 passed amendments to raise the permissible age for Muslims to marry in the state, from 16 to 18.

The amendments, referring to the Islamic Family Law (Selangor) Enactment 2003 ( Amendment 2018) and the Syariah Court Civil Procedure (Selangor) Enactment 2003 ( Amendment 2018), were passed unanimously.

Previously, the permissible age for a Muslim man and woman to marry was 18 and 16 respectively in Selangor.

The proposal to raise the minimum age for marriage came about following the recent incident where a 41-year- old Kelantanese man married an 11-year- old Thai girl and the Sultan of Selangor then called on the state Islamic Religious Council (Mais) and state Islamic Religious Department (Jais) to re- examine the matter in the state.

Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah gave his consent to standardise the minimum age for marriage to 18 years.