THE Labuan Economic Sector Coalition (LESC) has described the mandatory RT-PCR Test requirement which is imposed on arriving merchant vessels as “conditional threat” to the local community as it is only applicable in Labuan.
Failure to adhere to such requirements would see businesses halt their operations, massive pay cuts followed by major retrenchment exercises across the various industry sectors in Labuan, according to LESC’s lead facilitator Daniel Doughty.
“Such requirement will lead to a delay in Labuan port health charges impose by the carrier owner/ship’s owner,” Doughty pointed out in a media statement.
“These additional charges will be paid by the consignee and indirectly goes back to the community at Labuan. In summary, it could potentially increase the cost of living in Labuan.”
On this note, LESC said several critical points in the existing standard operating procedure (SOP) is ambiguous.
Without having an SOP that is broken down into details will only lead to misunderstanding and further confusion.
“LESC members do not want to experience the situation again where the Health Ministry (MOH) officers interpret according to their understanding and our members getting different treatment because of such ambiguity in the lamented Doughty.
“Due to this non-comprehensive, ambiguous SOP, LESC would like to suggest that the Labuan Disaster Management Committee (LDMC) begin to look at how other states can come up with a much consistent SOP.”
Despite the significant power that lies in the hand of the Labuan’s Health Department director, Doughty reminded LDMC not to fall back on the same mistake again by generalising the industry as seen in their SOP Perkapalan (shipping SOP).
“LESC would like to advise LDMC to review the ‘sign-on/sign-off SOP’ as we view them as another form of generalising and ignorance when it comes to the industry needs,” he opined.
Thus, LESC recommended that the sign-on/sign off SOP is further broken up into distinct areas such as vessel crew, OSV operator crew, platform/drillship crew, lay up vessels and rigs crews with each segment being treated with great consideration and concerns.
“We would like to again encourage LDMC for a dialogue session to shape a better ‘sign-on sign-off SOP’ and invite other concerned parties that are affected by this SOP of which is presently impacting the mental health of our nation seafarer,” added Doughty. – Sept 3, 2021
