KOTA BARU, Feb 14 — The Sugarbook application, allegedly used by several tertiary institution students to look for sugar daddies, leading to immoral activities, should be blocked, said Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Religious Affairs), Datuk Ahmad Marzuk Shaary.

He said if this was really happening among the students, the government should take stern action against those involved, especially the application operators.

"This is something that is very sad for us. The application should be prevented from being used in our country as it encourages people to do things that are not right and violate the laws including shariah law.”

He told this to reporters when asked to comment on the issue after presenting the Musa’adah Covid-19 Fund contributions to more than 80 taxi drivers at Sultan Ismail Petra Airport in Pengkalan Chepa, here, today.

It has been reported that an increasing number of public and private university students in this country have been using the application to look for sugar daddies to earn easy money in solving their financial problems, especially during this trying Covid-19 pandemic.

Sugarbook is also said to be the biggest sugar daddy-sugar baby dating service in Asia.

Marzuk said his department would leave the matter to be investigated by the Ministry of Higher Education and the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission for further action to be taken.

Earlier, National Students Consultative Council president, Muhammad Amir Asyraf Mohd Sabri said the statistics showed that 12,705 tertiary institution students were registered with the Sugarbook application.

He also said that based on records, there has been an increase of over 40 per cent in the registration of new users of the application due to financial pressures arising from the Covid-19 situation. — Bernama