| NEWS ARCHIVES |
| |
| Malay community woes are national problems: SM Goh |
| 5 Feb 2010 |
| |
|
Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong has described the problems faced by the Malay community in Singapore as national problems.
He said problems like their educational performance, as well as presence of dysfunctional families are not peculiar to the Malay community.
He adds that they also exist in the Chinese and Indian communities.
Mr Goh was speaking to Singapore media at the end of his visit to Oman and Bahrain yesterday.
"We got to attend to the problem in two ways. One on the national basis, the national policies must be right and also resources must be given to solve the national problems. Two, it's at the community level, that is outreach, that is implementation. How do you reach out for example to dysfunctional families."
Mr Goh said he believed using Muslim leaders will be more effective that using a Christian leader to reach out to the Muslim family.
Mr Zainul Abidin Rasheed, who's the Senior Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, and also is part of Mr Goh's delegation, said Malay-Muslim leaders are working on the problem.
"Nothing like having the Malay-Muslim leaders themselves being engaged in this and Dr Yaacob, and the Muslim leaders in fact with all the Malay-Muslim organisations are on hand.
"They are working through the community leadership forum to work out programmes. We are approaching them squarely, honest about it and we want to tackle as much as we can. We've made much progress, but we're now wondering if we've come to a plateau stage, and if so, whether it needs a different approach towards tackling these problems and these programmes." |