KUCHING : The mind-your-own-business mentality must be done away with in the fight against drugs, says Datuk Seri Fatimah Abdullah.
“The community is the closest to the drug users, therefore it can play its part in becoming the eyes and ears for the enforcement unit in combating drug and substance (abuse) issues,” said the Welfare, Community Wellbeing, Women, Family and Childhood Development Minister.
She said everyone, especially community leaders, parents, neighbours, should be concerned about their surroundings.
“You have to discard the thinking that you are going to get on their bad side if you report them.
Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind because if you don’t report them now, they are going to continue being involved in drug abuse,” she told a press conference after a meeting on ‘Tackling Problems Related to Drugs and Substance’ here yesterday.
“In a way, we are also helping them so that they can be rehabilitated as well as cutting the supply chain of drugs and substances from spreading wider in the community.”
According to Sarawak Narcotics Crime Investigation Department (NCID) chief Supt Sahar Abdul Latif, police had conducted 294 integrated operations (Ops Sarang) across Sarawak from Jan 2017 until March 2019 under the One Stop Committee (OSC) platform.
“We have also conducted Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) Murid-Murid where we focus on the actions of drug suppliers towards children and not the children. The SOP was launched on Jan 10, 2019, and has started its operation since Feb 13,” he said.
“Under SOP Murid-Murid, we have caught 13 suppliers who supplied drugs to school students. “Apart from that, we have restructured the narcotics motion since Jan 2019 where we established seven zones throughout the state to utilise manpower and logistics effectively.
“In terms of action, we have caught 275 drug suppliers and 658 drug users (excluding the case of student involvement) in the
first three months of this year, which recorded a significant increase in the number of drug suppliers of almost half the total recorded in the last two years,”
Supt Sahar said.
He said his department treated student involvement in drugs as a special case where children are seen as victims.
“From Feb to March 2019, we recorded a total of 118 school students involved in drugs where we focused on finding the drug suppliers. The youngest age of the students involved was 14 years old.”
Based on the statistics from the NCID, 537 suppliers and 1,628 users were arrested in 2018 while the year 2017 recorded the total arrest of 493 suppliers and 1,685 users, which preceded 328 suppliers and 1609 users in 2016.
Supt Sahar also revealed that in 2017, Sarawak was ranked 12th among the 14 states in Malaysia. As of March 2019, Sarawak has moved up two ranks.
Among those who attended the press conference were Women, Family and Childhood Development assistant minister Rosey Yunus, Community Wellbeing assistant minister Datuk Francis Harden Hollis and Sarawak Commercial Crimes Investigation Department deputy chief DSP Moliza Tauk.
