Pehin Sri : ‘Women can play more roles’

Posted on December 5, 2010, Sunday Taib says women’s main responsibility is to groom the future generation

WOMAN OF THE YEAR: Taib fixes on Datuk Seri Tra Zehnder a pin that goes with the ‘Datuk Patinggi Laila Taib’ award. Tra was the first Sarawakian woman to become a member of the State Legislative Assembly (DUN).

KUCHING: Women have bigger roles in the pursuit of social progress and their contributions to the continuous development of the nation should be seen from a wider perspective.
When officiating at the state-level celebration of 2010 Women’s Day yesterday, Chief Minister Pehin Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud said women must increase their roles in numerous fields such as economics, engineering, developmental research, and science and technology for society’s continuous progress to help Malaysia become a developed nation.
The event was held at Borneo Convention Centre Kuching (BCCK) here.
“Women have a lot of roles that cannot be undertaken by men. That’s why it is important to understand the wider scope of responsibility that women have to play in society,” said Taib.
He stressed that women’s main role was consolidating society’s success so that the people could maintain its stability and absorb all social changes.
Every social progress must involve consolidation and all efforts would be lost if society could not cope with and absorb change.
“Being wives and mothers, women would ensure that the strengthening and protection of social solidarity would start in the smallest unit in society, that is, the family. I don’t think we can consolidate our success nor build upon it in future without family stability,” he said.
Women would ensure the smooth and effective development of the younger generation as the roles of mothers were not only to strive for financial capital but also human capital.
It is their main responsibility to groom the future generation and their achievements would become part of society’s success.
Taib also mentioned that women would continue to contribute significantly to the nation’s development due to their high academic achievement when compared to men.
“The majority of scholars at all higher learning institutions in the country are women. A high number has achieved excellent academic results,” he said.
“This would only help Malaysia achieve its objective of becoming a developed nation. With more women in the high job market, the nation would have more resources and we would not have to rely on foreign labour.
“With their achievements and contributions to our society, we will certainly improve our workforce, stimulate positive economic growth, and most importantly we can have continuous development of our human capital.”
Taib, who believed that women have an important role to play in business and industries, hoped that the state would have more women corporate figures.
Hence he advised women to be more involved in entrepreneurship to the extent that they saw entrepreneurship as society’s way of life.
“In the government’s efforts to support and promote the various entrepreneurship developmental programmes especially among women, there are numerous small and medium enterprise (SME) funds and grants available totalling RM8.8 billion for the taking,” said Taib.
He said the government has also allocated about RM350 million for SME corporations.
From the amount, about RM200 million was for loans, RM100 million to strengthen the entrepreneurs’ financial ability while the remaining RM50 million was for promotion and product branding.
These also included SME fund allocation totalling RM13.4 billion managed by Bank Negara Malaysia.
“There is no more reason why we do not possess the confidence to succeed. Women in this country will move forward with men to build Malaysia into a developed country.”