Former Home Minister, Umaru Naseer has said that the Monitor and Control (MoniCon) Act need to be implemented in the Maldives to keep the peace.

Umaru told One Online today that it is not possible to declare a state of emergency and arrest people with long beards and short bottom hems so the solution is to implement MoniCon.

He said that he is sure that the MoniCon Act is the way to control crime and terrorism in the country be it gangs or those who are religiously misled. Umaru said that the MoniCon Act has been abandoned since the current administration took office.

Former Home Minister said that enough evidence to convict is required to make an arrest and so action is taken against those without enough evidence through MoniCon.

Umaru said that the current administration knows that there is no other way except to implement the MoniCon t and tag suspected terrorists and gang members but they are hesitant to do so because the the Act had been criticized by MDP in the past.

Indicating to the previous criticism of the MoniCon Act by MDP, Umaru said that MoniCon is not his idea but a widely used regulation across the world. And the laws were brought to the Maldives by taking them as an example.

Umaru said that the former President Mohamed Nasheed had said that the Maldives does not have extremism and there are European countries with higher levels of religious extremism.

He said that the Maldives does not have extremism to the level of some European countries due to the hard work of a number of religious scholars. Umaru also accused the current administration of not working hard enough to bring those people who are misled back to the society.

Umaru said that extremists need to be met with religious scholars and teach them how it actually is. And a very few extremists go towards violence and those who do go to violence need to be prosecuted to the full extent.

He said that it is no issue to control extremism if scholars are allowed to intervene before things go towards violence.

Extremists in the country have declared some people has "infidels" and attacking them while others have declared some business as "permitted" for theft to justify major theft.