KUCHING: Sarawak Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) has been urged to clarify if the federal government’s movement control order (MCO) supersedes Sarawak’s MCO.
In making this call, Sarawak Peoples’ Aspirasi Party (Aspirasi) president Lina Soo said there were now two different sets of MCO — the Sarawak MCO and the federal MCO.
Adding to the confusion was another new word — Full MCO (FMCO) thrown in by SDMC advisor Datuk Seri Dr Sim Kui Hian, she said.
“If Sarawak MCO precedes, and since the police is under the federal government, who will enforce SDMC’s MCO? If we get slapped with a compound by the police in violation of the federal MCO, can we turn to SDMC to ventilate?” she asked in a statement on Monday (May 31).
Soo said she also wanted to know if it was mandatory to follow the federal SOPs by updating the MySejahtera every other day or risk being fined RM1000 or the Sarawak SOPs that did not require Sarawakians to do so.
“As SOPs and ever-changing SOPs in Sarawak roll off the assembly line, I want the chairman of SDMC to clarify for once and for all, when does the observance of the Sarawak SOPs end and the federal SOPs start to apply? I believe Sarawakians also want to know if the MCO in Sarawak will end on June 11 or June 14.
“When SDMC can clarify once and for all to end all doubts for Sarawakians, I also hope that it will improve enforcement to make the MCO meaningful and effective as the circuit breaker, as it is meant to be,” she said.
Soo said that what had contributed to the high number of cases in Sarawak had been “half-baked SOPs at varying times to placate certain groups of people to score brownie points, and this had resulted in failure to flatten the curve, as each day set a new record for cases.
“Today, Malaysia is top of the world in terms of new cases per million of population with falling recovery rate and increasing fatality rate. One in 60 Sarawakians is Covid positive: Kuching 1 in 98, Miri 1 in 32, Bintulu 1 in 26 and Sibu 1 in 13. What is even more alarming is the reach — the Covid virus has penetrated all districts.
“The Covid spreads at a rapid geometric infectivity rate and with poor healthcare in our rural areas, the threat for a humanity disaster remains real and must be averted,” she said.
Soo pointed out that the implementation of the vaccination process had to be expedited to reach the rural folk and the limitations of the MySejahtera failed to make the vaccine accessible to those who needed it most.
“All community leaders must be mobilised and vaccination roll-in pods and mobile vehicles with well-equipped vaccination facilities to reach our suburban and rural communities must be employed,” she said.
She added that it was not really a herculean task or impossible mission just to carry out four million inoculations as for many countries, it would be a simple task just to vaccinate two million people in less than a month.
“But all it needs is for the government to have the will to do it, leaving aside politics, if a human disaster were to be averted,” said Soo.
