The Social Work Profession Act 2026: Protecting the Profession or Policing Compassion?

 The Social Work Profession Act 2026, now going through the final stages of being gazetted, marks a long‑awaited recognition of social work as a profession in Malaysia. The main purpose of the Act is to regulate social workers, elevate standards, protect vulnerable communities, and formalise professional practice, all of which are commendable.

Yet the Act also raises a deeper question: what model of professional regulation best serves the public interest, and how should the balance between State authority and professional autonomy be drawn?

Professional Regulation: A Shift in the Balance

Professions have historically been defined by their capacity for self‑regulation. Those providing specialised services and knowledge are expected to set standards of competence, uphold ethical conduct, discipline misconduct, and safeguard the public. Statutory recognition typically strengthens this framework by giving legal force to professional norms while preserving the profession’s institutional voice. In Malaysia, to be recognized as a profession, there must be a self-regulating body that is established by written law (Fairview International School Subang Sdn Bhd v Tribunal Tuntutan Pengguna Malaysia & Anor [2015] 1 MLRH 209).

The Social Work Profession Act 2026 adopts a markedly different model.

Instead of recognising or empowering an existing professional body, such as the Malaysian Association of Social Workers (MASW), the Act creates a new infrastructure for the licensing and regulation of social workers, namely the Malaysian Social Work Profession Council (Part II of the Act).  The Council is structurally and administratively anchored within the Government. The Council is chaired by the Ministry’s Secretary‑General, with the Director‑General of Social Welfare as Deputy Chairman, and most members are appointed by the Minister, who may revoke appointments “without assigning any reason” (s. 10(1)). The Council is expressly responsible to the Minister, who may issue directions on its functions (s. 12).

This is not merely statutory oversight; it is direct administrative control over the institution responsible for determining professional standards, ethics, competency, and discipline.

A Broad Definition with Narrow Safeguards

The Act’s definition of “social work services” is expansive:

“Services provided for the purpose of ensuring social functioning and wellbeing… through engagement, assessment, intervention planning, implementation… re‑evaluation and termination” (s. 2).

This definition clearly encompasses professional social work. But it also encompasses activities routinely carried out in family, voluntary, charitable, community, educational, and advocacy settings.

A soup‑kitchen volunteer who assesses a homeless person’s needs, or an NGO worker who intervenes to help a domestic violence survivor, may inadvertently fall within the statutory process described.

The Minister has stated that the Act does not apply to volunteers or caregivers. But verbal assurances in Parliament have no legal force. The Act's definition remains unchanged, and the penalties are severe: up to RM20,000 in fines or two years' imprisonment for unregistered practice; up to RM50,000 or three years imprisonment for employment of unregistered practitioners (Ss 31 and 32).

Given that unauthorised practice carries criminal penalties, legislative clarity is essential. If volunteers, family, and community caregivers are not meant to be regulated, the law must make this explicit.

Implications for NGOs and Civil Society

Malaysia’s social care ecosystem is plural and vibrant. The government has stated that there are over 54,500 active welfare NGOs. These NGOs, charities, shelters, and community organisations rely on a mix of professional staff, employees, volunteers, and members. Section 32 of the Act, however, imposes restrictions on the employment of persons who are not practitioners and creates liability for societies and office‑bearers.

The issue is not whether NGOs should meet professional standards when employing professional social workers, but whether the Act adequately distinguishes between employees providing:

• professional practice requiring registration under the Act, and
• voluntary or community‑based assistance that should remain unregulated.

The problem is that section 32 of the Act is overstated and needs amendment.

A Troubling Double Standard for Public Officers

Section 19(8) of the Act exempts public officers performing social work duties in the course of their employment from holding a practising certificate:

“Nothing in this section shall be construed to prevent a public officer to provide social work services in the course of his duties as a public officer without holding a practising certificate.”

It seems contradictory that, when professional registration is necessary to protect vulnerable people, government officers performing the same functions be exempt.

The Minister has suggested a phased approach to include civil servants eventually. But the Act contains no timetable and no statutory obligation to end the exemption. A transitional arrangement may be justified; an indefinite exemption is harder to defend.

Professional standards should attach to the function performed, not who is performing it.

Towards a Framework that Protects Without Policing

The Act should be welcomed for recognising social work as a profession and for seeking to protect the public. But professionalisation must not come at the expense of professional autonomy, civil society, or ordinary human compassion.

Several amendments would strengthen the Act:

• Clarify the definition of social work services to distinguish professional practice from voluntary or charitable activity.
• Expressly protect volunteers, family, and community caregivers from being treated as unauthorised practitioners.
• Provide clear guidance for NGOs, ensuring that professional staff meet standards while volunteers and general staff remain free to serve.
• Rebalance the regulatory structure to give practitioners and civil society a meaningful institutional role in determining standards and ethics.
• Review the exemption for public officers, ensuring it is genuinely transitional and subject to a defined pathway toward full professional compliance.
• Recognise experience alongside academic qualifications, ensuring that those who built Malaysia’s social welfare landscape are not excluded by statutory formalism.

Professional regulation should protect the public, but it should not police compassion, constrain civic action, or place the determination of professional standards predominantly in the hands of government administrators.

Malaysia needs a regulatory framework that elevates social work, respects professional expertise, and honours the indispensable role of civil society. The Act can achieve this, but only if it aligns professionalisation with autonomy, clarity, and the lived realities of social care.

 

MOHE Relaxes Disciplinary Actions, But the Laws of Control Remain Intact

 This article was first published in Aliran on 28 August 2026 here  https://m.aliran.com/thinking-allowed-online/mohe-relaxes-discipline-but-the-laws-of-control-remain-intact

The Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) announced today (28 August 2026) that it has begun implementing immediate measures to strengthen students’ freedom of speech and freedom of association, in line with the statement made by the Prime Minister, during the Forum Ilmuwan Malaysia MADANI (FIM) Series 13 on the abolition of the Universities and University Colleges Act 1971 [Act 30] (AUKU).

The statement is a welcome acknowledgement of the Prime Minister’s direction that Malaysian universities must move towards a position where student rights, academic freedom, and institutional autonomy are treated as constitutional norms rather than administrative privileges.

The announcement of an immediate suspension of disciplinary proceedings related to student speech and peaceful assembly is significant: it recognises that the existing enforcement culture has long been inconsistent with democratic principles.

However, the statement contains a fundamental contradiction that must be addressed if reform or even the interim measures are to be credible.

MOHE declares that it is “committed to ensuring that improvements to student rights are implemented without waiting for the full legislative process to conclude.” It lists the freedoms of association, organising activities, expression, communication, publication as rights that can be acted upon immediately.

Yet the same statement concludes by asserting that these freedoms “must be exercised responsibly and in accordance with the law.”

This is precisely the problem.

The phrase “in accordance with the law” refers to the very legal and regulatory framework — including Act 605, university statutes, and disciplinary rules — that has historically restricted student freedoms. And critically, AUKU is not the only legislation that controls student expression and association. Students and academics remain subject to nearly 20 other laws, including:

• The Sedition Act 1948
• The Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984
• The Communications and Multimedia Act 1948
• Various public order, assembly, and security laws and regulations

Unless there is a blanket immunity for students and academics in the exercise of academic freedom, the repeal of AUKU will only address a small portion of the restrictive legal environment. The machinery of control remains intact. A moratorium on disciplinary proceedings, even if this can legally be implemented, does not dismantle the underlying framework that enables overreach; it merely pauses one part of it. The offender may still be charged in a court of law.

Thus, MOHE simultaneously expands rights and reinscribes the conditions that limit those rights. This internal contradiction weakens the force of the announcement and explains why students, academics, and civil society have consistently argued that abolishing AUKU alone is insufficient. Without structural reform of the broader legal ecosystem, “responsible freedom” risks becoming a euphemism for continued administrative discretion.

The Prime Minister has articulated a rights‑driven vision for higher education. To implement that vision, MOHE must move beyond symbolic gestures and confront the deeper governance and legal structures that have constrained academic freedom for decades. Anything less will reproduce the same culture of control under a different name.

Of Hungry Ghosts and Odysseus in the Underworld

 This is the month of the hungry ghosts.

The gates of the other worlds, heaven and hell, swing open. Those who have departed this world return to their former abodes. Out of longing for this world, to see how those they left behind are faring, it is a coming back to the place that was once their home.

The Hungry Ghosts are those who have no living family to care for them, or who died unjustly, violently, or with unfinished business. They are released because they have been suffering in the underworld and need a chance to receive the merits of a full life: the food, the wealth, and the emotions not resolved. It is an attempt to complete a life that was not fully lived.

And those who are still here welcome them. On the streets of Kuala Lumpur or any of the suburbs, joss sticks burn all night. Beside their glow, you see offerings of food specially prepared for the visitors. No one disturbs the offerings, not even the hungriest dogs. It's a month of collective apology and pacification, a way to resolve old grudges from the spirit world so the living may have peace.

There is a whole protocol of taboos to bring order to this homecoming. The living alter their steps to accommodate the unseen. We do not step over the ash on the pavement, nor do we kick the small piles of fruit, for that would be akin to stepping on a guest’s plate.

During this period, there are special getai operas to entertain the spirits. Performed on covered stages built on streets closed for the occasion, they continue into the small hours of the morning. The entire front row of plastic chairs is left completely empty. No living person will sit there, saving the best view for the souls who have travelled so far.

We are warned not to stay out too late, not to whistle into the midnight air, and to stay away from dark waters, lest we accidentally tether ourselves to a passing shade. These are not merely superstitions born of fear; they are acts of deep courtesy; the rules of hospitality extended to those who no longer have a home.

We often walk past these roadside displays barely looking, not realising they are the physical manifestations of one of the most agonisingly human needs: to say the words left unsaid, to fulfil the obligations left uncompleted, and to find the closures never achieved in life.

This is not a need unique to the here and now of this region. It is a universal ache that echoes across time and geography.

In another world, in another time, in Homer’s Odyssey, the war-weary Odysseus descends into the underworld to find the spirit of Tiresias, the prophet, to guide him home. He digs a trench in the dark earth and pours out libations—milk, honey, sweet wine, and the dark blood of a sacrifice. The ghosts of the underworld have no voice until they are fed. They are shadows, drifting in hunger, waiting for the living to reach across the divide and give them the sustenance required to speak. By chance, Odysseus sees the ghost of his mother, Anticleia. He tries to throw his arms around her. Three times he reaches out, and three times she slips through his fingers like smoke from a candle.

That ancient, heartbreaking ache in the Greek underworld is precisely what is burning on the pavements of Kuala Lumpur during this month.

The "Hungry Ghosts" we feed are not monsters to be feared. In the local tongue, they are referred to as the Hao Xiong Di—the "Good Brothers." They are the forgotten souls, the ones who died without family, the ones whose names have faded from living memory. By laying out crackers, pouring thimbles of Chinese wine onto the tarmac, and burning paper replicas of cars, televisions, and other luxuries of our time, the living are acting just as Odysseus did. We are digging a trench in the concrete. We are giving the forgotten a momentary voice, a brief seat at the table, and a reassurance that they are still tethered to the kindness of those who are still living.

Whether it is an ancient Greek king, lost and pining for his mother on a desolate Mediterranean shore, a Londoner quietly wishing they could make one last phone call to a departed parent, or a Malaysian shopkeeper bowing before a plate of fruit on a humid night, the impulse is identical.

The veil between the living and the dead is terrifyingly thin, yet impossibly wide. We cannot march into the underworld to drag our loved ones back. And so, we do the next best thing. We leave a light on for them on the pavement. We stage operas. We burn a stick of incense to guide them home. We whisper into the smoke, hoping that whatever is drifting in the dark can hear us, can forgive us, and can finally find some peace.