EVERY MADANI COMMUNITY NATIONWIDE TO RECEIVE RM10,000 ANNUAL GRANT - FAHMI

GEORGE TOWN, May 4 (Bernama) -- Every MADANI Community nationwide will be given an annual grant of RM10,000, with RM3,000 for administration and RM7,000 for their activities and programmes.

Communications Minister Fahmid Fadzil said that, so far, the government has channelled the RM3,000 administrative grant to every MADANI Community to mobilise the community in terms of administration and supervision.

“Later, through district information officers, we will activate the MADANI Community with the RM7,000 allocation to implement programmes at the grassroots level. If we do our jobs properly, Insya-Allah we can apply to the MoF (Ministry of Finance) for an increase next year,” he said.

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He said this at the media conference after presenting the certificate for the official establishment of the MADANI Community to community leaders and representatives in Penang at the Jiwa MADANI Programme, which was also attended by Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow at Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Agama (P) Al-Mashoor here today.

Fahmi said there are 1,878 MADANI Community units nationwide, including 120 set up in Penang involving 40 state constituencies.

Acting as a conduit between the government and the people, he said the MADANI Community serves as a communication mechanism for disseminating information to the public and gathering feedback from the people at the grassroots level.

As such, he hopes that the MADANI Community can address the issues of defamation and fake news more systematically as part of the government’s effort to ensure that the media can report freely without any constraints. 

In another development, Fahmi said that based on discussions between the ministry and the D11 team of the Bukit Aman Criminal Investigation Department, which handles sexual crimes against children and women, WhatsApp is one of the platforms most misused by paedophiles.

“This is a shocking finding. In our discussions with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) and Meta, we aim to clarify that children under 13 cannot have WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram or TikTok accounts.

“If necessary, MCMC is ready to take stern action. We now get some form of cooperation but it is still insufficient because most platforms only state it as terms and conditions, but do nothing proactively to prohibit children from registering,” he said.

He explained that this was a worrying matter and the strict action was for the safety of children and families in the country.

On April 21, Fahmi reminded parents to ensure their children aged below 13 do not own any social media accounts because the commission found that it was not appropriate for children under 13 to use any social media.

-- BERNAMA