KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 28 — Kuantan MP Fuziah Salleh said Pakatan Harapan suggested that the government form a data management centre to collect information and train officers on gender impact analysis.

She said the coalition conveyed this to Finance Minister Datuk Seri Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz during an engagement session that was the result of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Transformation and Political Stability.

"We were able to have a few sessions with the minister and his technical team. He was very excited and I think there is actually buy-in

"We are proposing that there be some allocation to set up data management centres and to collect data in a better way in order to do gender analysis.

"I hope it will be implemented in Budget 2022,” she said at the Malaysia Gender Responsive Budgeting Series by the United Nations Population Funds (UNFPA) today.

Fuziah, who is also the PKR Women’s chief, said a gender responsive budget (GRB) was important as the 12th Malaysia Plan and the prime minister have specifically pledged to enhance women’s inclusivity and gender equality in the country.

She added that a GRB was not a new thing as in 2004, five ministries including the Ministry of Women’s Affairs had been involved in a pilot programme with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which also released a report on the gender-based manual for the budget to be implemented.

"However, since 2005 we have been unable to incorporate gender responsive budgeting in our budget,” she said.

On a related matter, the Kuantan MP said the Covid-19 pandemic affected women in the country as gender-based violence cases went up from March 2020 until September 2021 when the movement control order was in effect.

She said the pandemic disrupted the functions of the One Stop Crisis Centre, which provided shelter to domestic violence victims.

"The feedback we received is that women have nowhere to turn to. During Covid-19, hospitals do not allow shelter, so the victims have to go back to the perpetrators.

"Can you imagine they have no shelter? Police are manning the roadblocks and they don’t have enough investigation officers,” she said.