By Julian Tan
IT will be hard pressed to find anyone these days who does not have a problem catching up with the latest variation of the movement control order (MCO).
First introduced on March 18 last year, various forms of the MCOs have come about, depending on the severity of the outbreak, according to locations.
Besides MCO, there’s the conditional MCO (CMCO), recovery MCO (RMCO), enhanced MCO (EMCO), targeted EMCO (TEMCO), and administrative EMCO (AEMCO).
To make matters worse, the standard operating procedures (SOPs) are also different for each type of MCO. Sometimes, the same type of MCO can have varying SOPs. And the rules can change depending on the location.
Even the police are having problems keeping up with the latest SOPs. Last month, Bukit Aman Internal Security and Public Order head Datuk Seri Abd Rahim Jaafar admitted that in a media interview.
This week, Senior Defence Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob announced the change in MCO status for a few states. Notably, the MCO in Selangor, Kuala Lumpur, Johor and Penang have been lifted and replaced with CMCO.
But on the ground, save for the leeway given to inter-district travel, most people can’t tell the difference between MCO and CMCO. Even the greenlight given for inter-district travel makes little sense to the public. Many don’t even know which district they live in, let alone where the boundaries are.
In any case, Malaysians have a knack for beating the system – even if the system is designed to ensure their well-being. There are plenty of stories going around about how Malaysians are taking advantage of loopholes to visit their favourite restaurants in another district, or even another state.
On the flip side, there are also tales of how Malaysians had to put up with stress-inducing traffic jams caused by police roadblocks just to go to a nearby shop for daily necessities. All these have only heightened the public’s disdain for the MCOs.
What Malaysia needs is not different variations of the MCOs. What it needs is stricter enforcement of the SOPs.
For starters, there should not be any double standards when it comes to enforcing COVID-19 rules. Certain politicians seemed to get only a slap on the wrist for SOP violations while lesser mortals are hit with hefty penalties, including jail time for similar offences.
And why are ministers quarantined for only three days upon return from overseas while the rest of us have to put up with 10 days?
And how often do we see diners not complying with the one-metre distance in restaurants and that many of them were loitering around long after they had finished their meals?
At the end of the day, it’s the enforcement of the SOPs that matters most in containing the spread of the coronavirus, not what form of MCOs that should be imposed. – Mar 8, 2021
Julian Tan is a Focus Malaysia editorial contributor
The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Focus Malaysia.
