KUCHING, May 3 — The Kuala Lumpur-Kuching commercial weekly flights have been fixed to four times a week following a request from the Sarawak Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) and were agreed to by the National Disaster Management Committee (NDMC), state Transport Minister Datuk Lee Kim Shin said today.
He said NDMC has also agreed to SDMC’s requests for flights from Kuala Lumpur to Miri to twice a week and from Kuala Lumpur to Bintulu once a week, starting yesterday.
“Our requests were discussed at the NDMC meeting on April 30 on the implementation of the conditional movement control order (CMCO),” Lee said in a statement.
He said the once a week flight from Kuala Lumpur to Sibu will be allowed to operate on May 16.
“The decision of SDMC to reduce the number of inbound flights to Sarawak with hundreds of passengers per flight is to ascertain that there are enough rooms at designated quarantine centres in the state.
“This includes the availability of hotel rooms to cater for the incoming passengers at any time,” he said, in reference to the mandatory requirements for all Malaysians, mostly Sarawakians, who will have to undergo a mandatory 14-day quarantine period either as persons-under-investigation (PUI) or as persons-under-surveillance (PUS) for coronavirus infection on arrivals in Sarawak.
Lee said he has personally contacted his federal counterpart Datuk Seri Wee Ka Siong to convey the requests of SDMC to limit the frequency of flights from Kuala Lumpur to Sarawak.
“The matter was deliberated at NDMC, which agreed to our requests to limit the number of flights from Kuala Lumpur to Sarawak,” he said.
He said NDMC’s decision was conveyed from the federal MoT to the acting chief executive officer of Civil Aviation Authority Malaysia (CAAM) and chief executive officer of the Malaysian Aviation Commission to take the necessary follow up actions with the airline companies.
Lee thanked the relevant parties for their understanding and cooperation in the collective efforts to contain the spread of Covid-19 in Sarawak.
