Compiled by FAZLEENA AZIZ, C. ARUNO and A. ARAVINTHAN
CHILDREN’S welfare activists in India were up in arms over the government’s merger of the Childline 1098 service with the national general emergency service, Malaysia Nanban reported.
The Childline service comes under India’s Women and Child Development Ministry. It is operated by the Childline India Foundation.
It served as a emergency line for cases involving children, such as sexual abuse, child labour, trafficking and other crises.
Under the new proposal, calls will no longer be attended by social workers but will instead be answered by police personnel.
This means the service will operate under the Home Affairs Ministry. Social service organisations that worked with the Childline service said the line had helped stop at least 20 cases of child marriages last year.
> Three books by Malaysian writer N. Pachaibalan were launched simultaneously to good response from Tamil literary fans, Malaysia Nanban reported.
There was support from community leaders as well for the books Muran (Contradiction), Noolgalin Nagaram (City of Books), and Manakkan (Heart’s Eye).
The launch took place at the Sri Subramaniar Temple in Kajang.
● The above article is compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with this ' >'sign, it denotes a separate news item.
