Too often, maintenance is treated as optional.
From Ameena Siddiqi
When Seputeh MP Teresa Kok stood in Parliament to call for a federal Child Support Agency (CSA), I couldn’t help wondering how many more years will mothers have to hold things together on their own before the country finally treats their struggles as urgent?
Mothers have already done everything asked of them. They go to court. They file the paperwork. They chase signatures, keep every receipt, and attend every hearing. They wait months, sometimes years, for orders that are supposed to make things better.
And still, enforcement is often too slow or too weak to change their day-to-day reality.
Just ask Mizah Salleh. In August 2025, her story went viral after she revealed on social media that her ex-husband had failed to pay RM70,750 in child maintenance since November 2020.
That figure, RM1,350 a month in arrears, didn’t even include the extra costs which every parent knows come with school prep, medical needs, or Hari Raya.
“I sacrificed everything,” she wrote, “but this suffering shouldn’t fall on one mother alone.”
Thousands of women responded, not with surprise, but with recognition.
The numbers show that her case is far from unique. According to the 2020 Census, there are 910,091 single mothers in Malaysia, about 8.3% of all households.
Only 18% are registered with the women’s development department, leaving most invisible in official systems.
Almost 90% of working single mothers are in the B40 income group, and more than half live below the poverty line despite having jobs.
For Muslim mothers, the disappointment carries a moral weight, too.
Islam is clear: a father’s duty to provide does not end with divorce; it must be done bi’l-maʿrūf – adequately, fairly, and without harm.
Yet too often, maintenance is treated as optional.
This is not just a lived experience – it’s documented. SIS Forum (Malaysia), through its legal service Telenisa, found in its 2023 Statistics & Findings that 42% of all legal aid consultations were about child maintenance.
Nearly half of those cases involved fathers who outright refused to pay; a quarter cited unemployment; and some openly defied court orders, knowing that enforcement was weak.
In its Hak Kewangan study, SIS documented maintenance orders as low as RM150 for two schoolgoing children, sums far below the actual costs.
And this isn’t a new fight. SIS has been calling for a federal CSA since 2005, urging for a system that can assess realistic payment amounts, trace absent parents, deduct from wages, seize assets, and suspend passports or licences for persistent defaulters.
This can work, but it needs political will. In Australia, compliance rose from 25% under court orders to over 70% under a CSA, with 90% of arrears collected.
In the UK, the department for work and pensions and IFF Research found that most separated families established new arrangements within months of their old cases closing, and those backed by strong enforcement lasted longer.
The difference wasn’t that mothers tried harder but that the system finally did its part.
A Malaysian CSA could be tailored to our reality:
One national standard so that shariah and civil orders are enforced equally across states.
Automatic deductions from salaries or bank accounts, without waiting for non-payment.
Realistic assessments based on current cost-of-living data.
A humane approach for genuine hardship, ensuring that children are supported even when payers are struggling.
None of this is abstract. It’s the difference between a child who eats lunch in the canteen every day and one who quietly skips meals. It’s about replacing the anxiety of chasing payments with the certainty of knowing they will arrive.
It’s about ending the years of uncertainty, repeated court visits, and the weary knowledge that, in the end, too many mothers are left to shoulder the cost of raising children alone.
So what more must mothers do before this becomes a national priority? Must we speak publicly about the private pain of juggling bills and court dates? Must we wait until another generation of children grow up without the care they deserve?
Or is it enough that for decades, women and groups like SIS have been documenting, advocating, and proposing solutions, only to see the burden remain largely on the mothers’ shoulders?
Kok’s proposal felt like someone in power had finally heard what mothers, advocates, and researchers have been saying for years: that child maintenance should be a guaranteed right, not a gamble.
It’s time for Malaysia to stop waiting for mothers to prove, yet again, that their need is real.
Ameena Siddiqi is the communications manager of SIS Forum (Malaysia).
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.
