For the first six months of this year, 1,507 or an average of 8.2 rapes a day have been reported compared to 1,186 cases last year.

Opposition leader Lim Kit Siang revealed this statistics based on the parliamentary reply on crime index he received from Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi last week.

In a media statement, Lim said rape cases for the first six months of the year have increased 27.1 percent from last year.

"This is another shocking index of the worsening crime in the country, bearing in mind the high percentage of unreported cases of crime," he added.

Lim said that the crime index had registered a 8.7 percent increase in the first five months of the year as compared to the corresponding period last year.

"From January to May 2007, 87,582 cases have been reported as compared to 80,756 cases for the same period last year.

"Five days after I received the crime index, Inspector-General of Police Musa Hassan updated the crime statistics showing that for the first six months of the year, there had been a 5.11 percent increase in the crime index as compared to the corresponding period last year," he said.

"From Abdullah and Musa's statements, we can deduce that the average monthly crime incidence for the first five months of this year was 17,516 cases, while the crime incidence for June was 18,654.

"The crime incidence in June was 6.5 percent higher than the monthly average crime index recorded in the first five months of the year," he added.

Speak up

Lim urged Malaysians to speak up and make clear that they find it completely unacceptable that the crime index keeps climbing up, reflecting an ever worsening situation with regard to crime and crime-of-fear in the country.

"It defeats the very purpose of the establishment of the Royal Police Commission in 2004 to have a world-class police service and reduce crime in the country," he said.

"The Royal Police Commission had recommended a sustained nation-wide drive against crime, backed up by an annual and monthly crime reduction plans by the police," he added.

He also urged Musa to make public the national and local, annual and monthly, crime reduction plans to allow the closest public scrutiny and involvement of all Malaysian stakeholders in a nationwide drive against crime.

"This move will restore to Malaysians, tourists and investors a safe and secure environment where crime is low and where the fear-of-crime is eradicated and non-existent just like two decades ago," he said.