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Bandar Seri Begawan - There were tears in her eyes. Obviously her suffering was deep. You knew her before and her family. She was the prettiest girl in town. And that was just only a few years ago. But look at her now.

Whatever beauty she once had was now buried in layers of hurt and humiliation. Constant weeping caused permanent sacks under her eyes. And she carried her sorrows openly on her face. Once when young, her well off family bestowed on her all the luxuries she wished. But now what a come down she had to endure! She had at the moment next to nothing. Her husband or rather her ex-husband had stripped her of everything. She was left abandoned.

"I have no one to turn to' now," she moaned pitifully. "I do not know what to do."

Sheer desperation was in her voice. "My husband has failed to pay childcare for many months after a court order," she said.

"He took a lot of money from me. I was doing some small business with the government but he took a cut of that because he was in a position to dish out the contracts," she said.

Then after constant quarrels he dumped her. She then took a court order for child support. But that turned out to be a useless piece of paper. There was no way she was going to get any money from him.

Alas getting a court order after all that struggle battling red tape and what not was a futile exercise as usual because to her frustration in Brunei it is so difficult to enforce such an order.

So most divorced wives get nothing to support the children. Social workers have often pointed out the disaster that faces Brunei and the consequences. The problem is that no one seems to care.

And that is going to cause mountains of disaster. If that is not looked after soon it is going to wreck the nation. It left unattended myriad of social ills will rear their heads. That will include prostitution and other undesirable social conditions.

It is not a balanced situation. And the problem is getting all the bigger.

How would you like Brunei to be filled with starving children and their mothers? But how come these women face growing injustice? It is totally wrong by all counts. In the West the husband behaving this way could be jailed.

But in Brunei and in many countries in Asia men go Scot-free. Perhaps we pay lip service but in actual fact after the superhuman effort to drag the errant man before the courts many abandoned wives find it a useless exercise.

You say that there are no beggars in Brunei. But you just wait and see. At this rate it would not be too long. And prostitution? Ditto Crime? The same.

Could one of the- many reasons that husbands abandon their wives be that women are no longer the submissive creatures as they were before? A local social worker suggested.

They will not tolerate misbehaviour. They fight for their rights and so constant quarrels are the result leading to divorce and separation.

Nowadays many women would not consent for their husbands to marry another woman. And even if they agree very often the husbands are not well heeled enough to keep up two families let, alone three or four. Money is hard to come by these days.

But how could Brunei solve this problem. For the moment there is no move to counter this ill. The suffering is getting too much. However if the authorities are serious the solution is simple: Take a number of selected cases and enforce maintenance.

That should send a shiver down the spines of these men who flaunt the law like lords and put them behind bars.

That should be highlighted in the press and on TV. Men carted away to prison for non-maintenance should send the correct message.

But will this happen in Brunei? There are serious doubts. Will we change our enforcement procedures? Only time can tell.

But a step has been taken in the right direction. There is a strict law protecting women and children. The police have a special section for that which is quite efficient. So some sort of foundation is there.

Therefore it is a matter of extending these powers and empowering the police to include maintenance order, which should do the trick.

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