KUALA LUMPUR, July 17 — Deputy Minister Hannah Yeoh today urged the private engineering sector to help the Pakatan Harapan (PH) administration weed out corruption, saying they should play a role in "cleaning up” the country.

The women, family and community development deputy minister said industry players must take a firm stance on graft and report any violations to the authorities.

Her speech, delivered at the Women in Science, Engineering and Technology Conference here, appeared aimed at assuring businesses that any dealings with the government will be done purely on merit.

"It is my hope that we will be able to minimise corruption in Malaysia and it should be much easier to do business now if you do everything right.

"Help us. If there is corruption, please report it to the MACC (Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission) or the authorities,” she said.

Her plea was met with an enthusiastic response from the audience, many of whom seemed star-struck by Yeoh’s presence.

The DAP leader is very popular with women, especially after becoming Malaysia’s first female state legislative assembly Speaker.

Yeoh and other PH women leaders have actively pushed for greater women empowerment, both in the public and private sectors.

Today, the Segambut MP said the PH government will facilitate efforts to increase women’s participation in the skilled workforce, engineers among them.

Her ministry has already announced the setting up of day care centres at all ministry offices to assist working mothers in a bid to keep women in the workforce. Private companies have been urged to do the same.

The lack of childcare centres is a major factor causing mothers to shun work.

Women make up only two-fifths of the country’s 15 million workforce and less than a fifth of the engineering sector, despite the increase of female enrolments in engineering courses.

"We need to recognise the importance the role women engineers play... we set up day care centres at the ministries so women can work and I urge the private sector to follow suit,” Yeoh said.

"We want more women to be able to work.”

There are about 70,000 trained engineers currently, but the government said it needs up to six times more by 2020.