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Not long ago, a former colleague told me about her struggle to find childcare after giving birth to her baby girl. Like many new mothers, she had to go back to work, and like many Malaysians, she simply couldn’t afford fancy daycare centres that charge half a mortgage. So she found a babysitter living in a PPR flat - RM600 a month for 10 hours a day. It wasn’t ideal, but it was what she could afford.
From the very first week, her baby kept falling sick. Flu, fever, diarrhoea - repeat. When she finally asked the babysitter what was going on, she discovered the truth: the woman was caring for more than a dozen other children inside the same small flat she shared with her husband and her own kids.
Think about that for a moment.
One cramped unit. Fifteen children. Multiple adults. No hygiene standards, no screening, no supervision, no accountability. These kids weren’t just sharing germs - they were sharing vulnerability. And the scariest part? Parents have no idea who walks in and out of that house. We trust complete strangers because the economy gives us no choice.
And that brings me to the horror that made headlines once again: a babysitter’s husband who sodomised and murdered a nine-month-old baby boy under the care of his wife some four years ago, has recently been sentenced to 30 years in prison and 13 strokes of the cane. The case was so brutal it shook Malaysians - yet, in a twisted way, it shouldn’t shock us. Because this is exactly what happens when childcare is treated like a neighbourhood side hustle instead of a regulated service that deals with actual human lives.
We’ve normalised a system where desperate parents leave their infants with anyone who claims “boleh jaga baby” - often in overcrowded PPR homes where adults come and go freely. It works fine… until it doesn’t. And when it doesn’t, a child dies.
In Hollywood, you get Daddy’s Day Care - a comedy where a bunch of well-meaning men run a daycare full of hyperactive, sugar-high kids. Cute chaos. Everybody goes home happy. But in real life? In low-cost flats where one babysitter handles fifteen toddlers while a bored husband lounges in the next room?
That’s not comedy. That’s Russian roulette.
We can’t keep pretending these tragedies are rare accidents. They’re symptoms of a childcare crisis we refuse to acknowledge. Parents are cornered, babysitters are overwhelmed, and children are paying the highest price.
Until childcare becomes affordable, regulated, and safe, this won’t be the last baby we mourn.
Fa Abdul (fa.abdul.penang@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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