KUALA LUMPUR, May 20 — DAP Bangi MP Ong Kian Ming has called for a tell-all press conference to be hosted by Putrajaya.

Ong urged Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin and key Cabinet ministers to hold a joint press conference and field questions from journalists in the event a more severe or total lockdown is implemented in the Klang Valley or Malaysia.

“There has been increasing speculation that a lockdown, either in the Klang Valley or the entire Peninsular Malaysia, may take place very soon especially since the number of new cases exceeded 6,000 yesterday.

“I support what was said yesterday by Datuk Seri Dzulkefly Ahmad, the head of the Selangor Taskforce on Covid-19 (SFTC) and later re-emphasised by the Mentri Besar of Selangor, Datuk Seri  Amirudin Shahri, that a lockdown would be acceptable but it must come with other conditions such as financial assistance to help the most affected groups including the bottom 40.

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“Clear announcements and implementation of SOPs, sufficient facilities and equipment for learning at home and a clear strategy for mass testing and beyond (Find, Test, Trace, Isolate and Support or FTTIS), just to name a few,” he said in a statement today.

“Journalists must be allowed to ask as many questions as they want to these ministers and the ministers must present clear and concrete answers to these questions,” said Ong.

The questions raised by Ong are:

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  • What is the plan for mass testing and tracing during such a lockdown? How are we going to isolate and support those individuals who have tested positive during these mass tests and trace programs?
  • What is the timeline for approval by the relevant authority for vaccines such as Sputnik (from Russia) and Cansino? What is the documentation which is still needed to evaluate the effectiveness of these vaccines?
  • What is the plan to control the outbreaks at factories which form something like half of the existing clusters? What type of accommodation arrangements need to be changed especially among the foreign workers some of whom are living within the factory area?
  • What are the plans to prevent further outbreaks in the prisons and detention centers in Malaysia? Are there plans to give prisoners and prison officials vaccines in the near future?
  • How can financial assistance be targeted to those who will be most affected by a more severe lockdown such as the SMEs, the retail sector and also the tourism sector? Will wage subsidies be offered to the companies in these sectors?

“Let’s avoid the previous situation of one-man-show press conferences which then have to be followed up by u-turns because one minster wasn’t communicating with another.

“Let’s have a joint press conference by the key Cabinet ministers to convince the rakyat that this Perikatan Nasional government is capable enough to get us out of this pandemic,” he said.