KUALA LUMPUR, May 20 — Bagan MP Lim Guan Eng said today he is willing to apologise if minister Khairy Jamaluddin’s claims of a private company offering Covid-19 vaccine doses to the Penang state government being bogus is proven to be true.
He said the apology will enable everyone to focus on the importance of securing vaccines for the public through a whole of government effort.
“Whether the company exists or not is a secondary issue, and should not distract from the two principal issues of the federal government granting immediate approval to all state governments to purchase vaccines or secure vaccine donations,” Lim said in a statement.
The former Penang chief minister said it is not wrong to seek vaccines at the earliest possible time for the rakyat, and to protect them by every legal means possible.
“In the face of a record surge in daily infections to a frightening 6,075 cases yesterday, the public is crying out urgently for vaccines to protect them from Covid-19 and its vicious variants.
“The rakyat’s desperation for vaccines should move the PN Federal Government to approve immediately, the procurement of Covid-19 vaccines by state governments or offers of vaccine donations,” he said.
On Tuesday, Penang Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow said the state wants the Health Ministry’s approval over its request to accept a donation of two million doses of the Sinovax vaccine for the state, which was reportedly offered by a private company.
He justified it by saying that if approval is forthcoming, the ministry could also distribute the vaccines purchased for Penang to other states. However the request was subsequently turned down.
In response, Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation Khairy Jamaludin said yesterday that the donation of two million doses of Covid-19 Sinovac vaccines from a private company offered to the Penang state is bogus and untrue.
The National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (NCIP) coordinating minister said that checks made with Sinovac showed there is no evidence to show that the company — Xintai Development Enterprise — had approached them to purchase the vaccines for Penang state.
Following Khairy’s claim that the offer was false and came from a company that did not exist, Chow responded by saying no mention of a false company was made in the rejection letter from the ministry to the state government.
Instead he said that Health Ministry secretary-general Datuk Mohd Shafiq Abdullah informed the Penang state government that it is not necessary to seek out private vaccine contributions since Putrajaya is already planning and implementing the National Immunisation Programme.
