KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 9 — Leaders, exco members and state authorities of the Selangor government only met Health Minister Datuk Dr Adham Baba twice since March to discuss Covid-19 mitigation efforts, the State Legislative Assembly was told today.
This was revealed by Selangor’s Health, Welfare, Women and Family Empowerment exco Dr Siti Mariah Mahmud, when answering supplemental questions during today’s Assembly sitting.
She was asked by Bukit Lanjan assemblywoman Elizabeth Wong to confirm the number of times that state government leaders nationwide had met with Dr Adham, to which she initially replied: “Once”.
“(We met the minister) only once, when the minister was replaced,” she said, referring to the change of government that took place in March that saw Dr Adham replace Datuk Seri Dzulkefly Ahmad.
“After that, we were not called for a meeting (with the minister) again, but there was one time the health minister came here to meet the mentri besar, and I was present during this meeting,” Dr Siti said during today’s session.
Selangor’s health exco also revealed how Kajang currently has the highest number of active Covid-19 cases with 384 patients, with 6,149 cumulative infections recorded in total within the state.
Selangor has been consistently recording new Covid-19 cases, with case numbers in the triple digits over the last week, triggering a conditional movement control order (CMCO) in the Klang Valley in mid-October.
As for mitigation efforts, Dr Siti said around RM400 million has been spent by the state government on awareness and aid programmes for Selangor residents and frontliners.
Among them include almost RM3 million spent on mass testing within the state over two phases, the first phase involving 5,433 tests, with the second phase still ongoing.
Dr Siti also detailed how the state government has given out free face masks to all students and civil servants within Selangor, including State and District Education Departments, the Welfare Department, and Covid-19 prevention kits supplied to preschool centres, all costing almost RM6.5 million.
She also revealed how other costs taken on by the state include the execution of awareness programs stressing the importance of Covid-19 SOPs, improvements done on state contact-tracing app Selangkah, while even waiving test fees for Sabah returnees.
