Malaysian who influenced gov to pass child seat law wins international award
Jerrica · Apr 28, 2021 06:43 PM
0
0
Meet Jchanet Tan, the woman who has been leading the charge to advocate the use of child seat in Malaysia. Tan’s efforts in our country have now earned her the Child Passenger Safety International Instructor of the Year Award.
The award was handed out by the National Child Passenger Safety Board in America. The council was where Tan received professional training to become a National Child Passenger Safety Technician (CPST).
Credit: Child Passenger Safety Malaysia
She first started her self-funded training in 2017 and quickly worked her way to instructor status within a year. This allowed her to bring her knowledge home and kick start the first National CPST Certification Training course in Malaysia.
But other than training others on the importance of child passenger safety and the use of child seats in cars, Tan also worked tirelessly to highlight the issue to the Malaysian government. As a result, the government passed the country’s first child seat law in 2020.
To date, Tan’s CPST training course has produced 77 technicians, including 12 in Singapore, to continue advocating the importance of child car seats to the region.
But her work didn’t stop there. Tan went on to start the first non-government organisation dedicated to keeping children safe in cars.
With her NGO she also launched activities such as ‘Pit Stop’ for quick road-side car seat checks, the ‘Save to Purchase’ programme to verify the authenticity of car seats, and ‘Rent to Buy’ to help low-income families transition into the new law.
“Changing an entire country’s way of thinking about child passenger safety is the legacy of Jchanet Tan,” said National Child Passenger Safety Board Chair Lonny Haschel.
“She took it upon herself to become a Technician and an Instructor. She is a difference-maker and has demonstrated there are no limits or boundaries in the world of child passenger safety.”
To think that Jchanet’s journey started when she strapped her baby into a child car seat and went to a “mummy gathering” just to emphasise the number of deaths caused by the lack of proper child safety protection in cars.
There isn’t a time in memory that doesn’t involve staring at cars. After discovering the excitement of watching Schumacher vs Hakkinen, Formula 1 became a major part of life. The love for cars and F1 ultimately led to a job with CAR Magazine. The untimely death of the magazine meant a hiatus from cars at lifestyle women’s magazine Marie Claire before another opportunity came knocking again.
