The Women, Family and Community Development Ministry will give full cooperation to the task force which would be established to study and examine issues related to sex crimes against children.

Its minister Rohani Abdul Karim said her ministry would assist the task force, which would be led by Minister in the Prime Minister Department Azalina Othman Said, by giving out the entire fact sheet pertaining to the case.

"We will together find the best way to handle such cases which are very sensitive indeed.

"Our statement still remains the same, rape cases are still rape, no matter what the offenders do, they have to go through the civil court," she told reporters after celebrating the National Women's Day 2016 at the Putrajaya International Convention Centre (PICC) today.

Earlier, Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak when launching the National Women's Day 2016, also expressed his regret on the number of rising cases involving abuse and rape of children.

As such, Najib announced an immediate establishment of a task force to review and examine issues related to sex crimes, particularly rape involving children.

In another development, Rohani said the ministry planned to improve the 'MamaCare' initiative by creating a smartphone application to expand its reach to the customers.

She said the smartphone application expected to be ready by this year's end would allow users to see the services provided by MamaCare, including prices offered and customer feedback.

She added currently there were 551 MamaCare practitioners across the country and a number of them had managed to open spas and produced their own products.

The prime minister in his speech also said the Mamacare service, which was mooted from the National Blue Ocean Strategy, played a big role in the economy of women enabling them to earn an income of RM12,000 per month.

- Bernama