KUCHING – Sarawak ministers must stop making confusing statements on Covid-19 standard operating procedures and movement restrictions, whether a lockdown or tighter rules, said Chong Chieng Jen.
“Just as Dr Sim Kui Hian, state minister for local government and housing, announced on his Facebook page that ‘Sarawak will go straight to MCO 1.0 (instead of a small step up from the conditional movement control order, or CMCO, to MCO 3.0) from May 29, Datuk Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah, state minister for tourism, arts, culture, youth and sports, announced that Sarawak will not go into a full lockdown like that of MCO 1.0,” said the state DAP chief.
“For a matter as important as curbing Covid-19 infections, there ought to be an official announcement by the state Disaster Management Committee (DMC) instead of Facebook posts by one minister contradicting the announcement of another.
“To add more confusion to the matter, especially for the business sector, after the state DMC announcement that Sarawak will go into MCO 3.0 from May 29 to June 11, the prime minister announced that there will be a full nationwide lockdown from June 1 to 14. Is Sarawak going under lockdown until June 11 or 14?”
This is not the first time the state and federal governments have had conflicting policies and SOPs despite being partners, he said.
He added that in the past week, Putrajaya has made multiple statements with regard to the MCO, SOPs, and then, a total lockdown.
“At the same time, the Sarawak government has made several statements with regard to the state continuing with the CMCO with tightened SOPs, the tightened SOPs, the implementation of the MCO in Sarawak, and another set of SOPs.
“These changes in SOPs were made within a short period of one week, leaving the people and business sector ‘breathless’ in trying to cope and comply with the changes in the SOPs and policies.
“What is more frustrating to the people and business sector in Sarawak is that, despite the different names used by the Sarawak government, the SOPs implemented are, in essence, very similar to the ones imposed by the federal government.”
He slammed the Sarawak administration for trying to garner cheap publicity on the issue of state autonomy.
Autonomy is meant for the state to make better decisions for the good of the people, not create more confusion in a time of an emergency.
“Amid all this confusion, we are witnessing rising Covid-19 cases in Sarawak, making Sarawak one of the worst-hit states, with increasingly high new cases in the past weeks.
“Fellow Sarawakians are dying from Covid-19, patients in the intensive care unit are suffering from the infection, frontliners are risking their lives to protect us from Covid-19, and here, the Sarawak government is still indulging itself by playing up local sentiments on autonomy.
“It is time for the state government to put its political agenda aside and have a thorough discussion with the federal government to come up with a set of clear, certain and effective SOPs to effectively curb the spread and save Sarawakian lives.”
Chong said the state DAP welcomes the announcement by national immunisation programme coordinating minister Khairy Jamaluddin that Sarawak will be allocated 350,000 vaccine doses per week starting June, with 4.4 million doses by end-August.
“This means Sarawak will be the first state to complete the national vaccination programme in Malaysia, and that the state government does not need to purchase vaccines on its own.
“To achieve this target, the vaccination process and SOPs must be simplified and made more accessible to the people for a smooth delivery.”
Towards this end, he said, Sarawak DAP urges the state government to adopt Federation of Private Medical Practitioners’ Associations Malaysia proposals, the gist of which are:
- Distribute vaccines to all private clinics, and allow private general practitioners to administer the jab at their respective clinics; and,
- Allow walk-ins for vaccination, without people having to first register through MySejahtera and wait for the system to set the time and place for an appointment. – The Vibes, May 30, 2021
