.jpg "Foreign workers queue up to be tested for Covid-19 at Kampung Baru, Kuala Lumpur April 16, 2020. u00e2u20acu201d Picture by Yusof Mat Isa")
PUTRAJAYA, May 11 — The government will hold discussions with the Ministry of Human Resources to ask employers to provide a tag or identification to indicate that a foreign worker has undergone a Covid-19 swab test.
Senior Minister (Security Cluster) Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob said the tag was to enable the public to identify foreign workers who had undergone a Covid-19 test swab.
“As of to date, anyone who has taken the Covid-19 swab test, the hospital or clinic will issue a letter saying they are negative or positive.
“If positive, it is immediate admission to the hospital. Those found to be negative will receive a letter saying that they are not infected,” he told reporters after a meeting of the Special Ministerial Committee on the movement control order (MCO) here today.
Ismail Sabri said a letter issued after a person was found to be Covid-19 negative could be shown to the authorities at a roadblock or any inspection.
“But for personal identification, there is none yet to date,” he said.
Meanwhile, Ismail Sabri said several new clusters that occurred during the conditional movement control order (CMCO) were not due to employers’ non-compliance with government-imposed standard operating procedures (SOP).
“As an example, what happened at a construction site in Setia Alam, was not because they did not comply with the SOP. They actually obeyed the SOP when they brought their construction workers for swab test before allowing them to work.
“And when the swab tests were conducted some were indeed found positive Covid-19 and so on, and it did not take place when they were working.
“So the owner of the construction company actually complied with the SOP to check his workers, so no issues of failing to comply and the chicken factory cluster case in Pedas was not newly opened during the CMCO, because it had been opened from the first phase of the MCO for food related reasons, “he said.
Thus, he said, in order to sever the spread of the Covid-19 infection, the government took a new approach by shutting down only Covid-19 positive localities and not the whole area.
“If in the past we closed the whole Setia Alam area, all the houses closed but now we take a different approach, we close the affected areas and we treat those involved in the area, we focus on the infected people and the infected area,” he said. — Bernama
