Five-year strategic plan to address underage marriage — DPM

PUTRAJAYA: The National Strategic Plan to Address the Causes of Underage Marriage has been launched yesterday in efforts to curb the problems at the grassroots level.

Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah, who launched the plan, said it encompassed seven objectives, 17 strategies and 58 programmes to address these causes in the next five years.

Speaking to the media after the launch, Dr Wan Azizah, who is also the Minister of Women, Family and Community Development, said the government had identified six major causes of underage marriage.

“These causes will be addressed through policy changes, to amend the relevant laws and the implementation of awareness programmes and activities,” she said, adding that 61 agencies would be involved as implementing agencies for the short, medium and long-term programmes.

Among the six causes identified are poverty; lack or no access to reproductive health education; lack of access to education and society’s stigma that marriage is the best choice to solve problems.

The programmes were formulated with aims, among others, to strengthen support to the existing socioeconomic and ‘outreach’ programmes; to provide friendly reproductive health services for children and teenagers and to offer Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET), she said.

Dr Wan Azizah said the steering committee, comprised all the implementing agencies, has been set up to oversee the implementation and development of the programmes under the plan. — Bernama