Calls for Malaysia to have stronger Covid strategy

Kuala Lumpur

MALAYSIA'S latest Movement Control Order (MCO) needs to be supplemented with additional initiatives if the country's economy and healthcare system are to recover, observers say.

Finances should be poured into testing capacity and hiring huge numbers of temporary contact tracers and more medical practitioners to help roll out the vaccine, said Malaysian senator Liew Chin Tong.

"If the government has to incur costs to ramp up, please spend like no tomorrow, as long as the spending is accountable and with no corruption," he added.

Mr Liew, who chairs the Democratic Action Party in Johor, said the latest MCO is inadequate - doing the same thing as the country has done previously, yet expecting a different result.

In a press conference on Monday, Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin announced new travel restrictions across Malaysia.

The strictest restrictions are in six states: Selangor, Penang, Sabah, Johor, Malacca and the Federal States (composing Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and Labuan). Inter-district travel is banned in these states, and travel within each district has been restricted to 10 km. Varying restrictions are in place across the other states. A ban on inter-state travel has also been enforced across Malaysia.

The MCO is expected to last two weeks, and will begin on Jan 13.

At the press conference, Mr Muhyiddin admitted that Malaysia's healthcare system was at a breaking point, with 15 Covid-19 hospitals within the country recording an occupancy of more than 70 per cent.

His administration has come under fire for its response to the pandemic.

Mr Liew is a member of the All Party Parliamentary Group Malaysia (APPGM) for the Reform of All Places of Detention - an apolitical inter-party committee that has implored the government to look into prisons and places of detention which have been known as high-risk areas for the pandemic. The committee also includes Malaysian politicians of rival political parties including Umno and PKR.

Several other parties have also weighed in. Local health professionals, for instance, wrote an open letter to Mr Muhyiddin, asking that Covid-19 patients be sent only to designated Covid-19 hospitals.

Awang Bulgiba Awang Mahmud, who is chairman of the Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry's Covid-19 Epidemiological Analysis and Strategies Task Force, has said Malaysia would need at least six to 12 weeks of lockdown to recover its health services and see a sustained decline in infections.

"We are already at breaking point now, and new cases continue to be in the thousands. It's impossible to continue current containment strategies with such a high number of cases if we don't have enough healthcare workers or beds to deal with the surge," he told the New Straits Times.

But Mr Liew said a lockdown alone is insufficient and changes are necessary to the country's strategy to deal with the pandemic: "There is no livelihood nor economic recovery if we can't deal with Covid-19 decisively. A lockdown must not be the first response but instead, a last resort. A lockdown now feels more like a knee jerk reaction than anything else. As far as Covid-19 is concerned, Malaysia needs to do things differently, urgently."

The MCO comes shortly after an announcement that Malaysians working in Singapore and who are permanent residents of Singapore would be able to apply to return to Malaysia under the Periodic Commuting Arrangement (PCA) scheme, raising hopes of a normalisation of travel restrictions between the two countries.

Previously the PCA was open only to those with long-term immigration passes. Those returning to Malaysia have to be sponsored by their employers.

The MCO represents a blow to Malaysians stuck on either side of the Causeway - some not having returned home in nearly a year and others unable to cross over to Singapore for work.

Richard On, 38, was retrenched as a storeman from a warehouse company due to the pandemic.

"There have been many redundant headcounts due to Covid-19 and the warehouse was not able to operate as usual," he said.

He was let go last November and has been living in Malaysia since. He is holding out for a reopening of Singapore's borders as he says the pay in Malaysia is much lower.

Jed Law, 35, who is an engineer in Singapore and is currently a permanent resident, has not returned to his hometown in Johor since Singapore's circuit breaker in March.

"The main thing is the hassle of going through quarantine when we return to Singapore. We can still keep in contact with loved ones through technology, so there's no need to return until it is truly safe and easier to travel."