Ministry targets 5,000 lay counsellors from Komuniti Perwani each year

PUTRAJAYA: The Women, Family and Community Development Ministry targets to have 5,000 lay counsellors each year from among members of Komuniti Perkumpulan Wanita ( Perwani), which are community women’s groups.

Its minister Datuk Seri Rohani Abdul Karim said the move was aimed at assisting professional counsellors solve social problems in local communities.

“We want to create more lay counsellors because for me, not all having problems need professional counsellors. They just want someone to hear them out,” she told a press conference after opening the Perwarni Leadership Summit 2016 at the Putrajaya International Convention Centre here yesterday.

The summit is being held in conjunction with the National Blue Ocean Strategy ( NBOS) International Week. It is one of the six core programmes during the NBOS International Week which ends on Aug 20.

The lay counsellor module, which is based on the concept of volunteerism, seeks to enlist members of society to be frontliners in assisting professional counsellors solve social problems. Rohani said that so far 1,450 Perwani members had been trained by Institut Sosial Malaysia to be lay counsellors.

According to her, for a country of 30 million people, only 6,000 professional counsellors were registered with the Malaysian Counsellors Board thus far, which is a very low figure.

She said it was hoped that Perwani members can be the ‘eyes and ears’ of the government on the people’s concerns.

The Perwani initiative was introduced under the eighth National Blue Ocean Strategy, that is, Women Empowered For You ( WE4U), as an agent for women’s transformation at the community level.

It was mooted by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak when launching the 1Million Women Purple Walk on March 17, 2013.

Thus far there are 12,881 Perwani groups throughout the country involving 169,105 members. The ministry is targeting 100,000 groups by 2020.

Meanwhile, commenting on a newspaper report claiming that 40 per cent of 222 pregnant women surveyed in a study group in the private sector faced discrimination during their careers, Rohani said the ministry was seeking detailed feedback on the matter. — Bernama