KUCHING, April 29 — DAP’s Bandar Kuching Member of Parliament Dr Kelvin Yii Lee Wuen today cautioned the federal government against opening up the economic sector in stages prematurely without taking relevant factors into consideration.
“From the cautionary tale of our neighbouring countries, all it takes is one misstep or the weakest link for us to see another spike in infection cases in our country again, negating all the good work that was done for the past few weeks under the movement control order (MCO),” he said.
He said the federal government must come up with a clear standard operating procedure (SOP) and communicate it to the industry.
He said based on feedback that he has received, many companies in the economic sector are still confused about the SOP, and as a result, many of the workers are concerned about returning to work.
“The SOP such as on how companies can limit the number of workers at work to practise safe distancing, on lift usage, pantry, meetings, common areas, and even centralised office air-conditioning must be communicated clearly,” he said.
He said the SOP should be about how the government intends to hold inspections and enforce it should there be a breach.
“All these are important to allay concerns of workers and also to increase their productivity,” he said when commenting on Minister of International Trade and Industry Datuk Seri Azmin Ali’s announcement that the federal government has allowed companies under the economic sectors which have been permitted to operate during MCO to resume full operations starting today.
Azmin, however, said the companies must adhere to the SOP which had been set according to their respective sectors, adding that failure to comply would result in the immediate revocation of permission to operate and legal action would be taken.
Dr Yii stressed in order for different economic sectors to open up and start operating in the midst of this pandemic safely and responsibly, the government should ramp up the mass testing capacity and be transparent about its data.
He said it must also provide a clear and proper SOP on safe operations to limit the risk of infection among staff.
He also hoped that the Sarawak government will take into account the current situation and local context and not rush to a decision without taking into account all the necessary data, especially the true Covid-19 infection rate in the state.
“While the daily number of Covid-19 infections in Malaysia for the past week have been rather encouraging, these have to be treated with caution as we need to properly peel through these numbers to get the full story,” he stressed.
He said there could be many other infected people that have yet to be detected.
