IN order to contain the untoward spike of COVID-19 infection among its workforce, Hartalega Holdings Bhd has commenced a precautionary COVID-19 testing of all its employees on Dec 7.
To further ensure the safety of its workforce, the glove maker said it has expanded the testing to cover a total of 8,772 personnel comprising local employees as well as outsourced vendors such as security personnel and canteen operators.
This was conducted in phases at its Next Generation Integrated Glove Manufacturing Complex (NGC) in Sepang and its Bestari Jaya operations as well as its offices in Petaling Jaya and Bandar Sri Damansara.
Following the testing exercise which was conducted by an independent clinic certified by the Ministry of Health and fully completed on Dec 10, 35 Hartalega employees were tested positive for COVID-19.
“This comprises 20 employees at the Bestari Jaya operations and 15 employees at the NGC, all of whom were asymptomatic during the test,” the company said in a media statement.
According to Hartalega, the affected employees are currently under medical care at a government healthcare facility as per the directive from the Ministry of Health.
“All primary contacts of the affected individuals over the past 14 days have been identified and placed under quarantine and will undergo subsequent testing as per SOPs before they are permitted to return to work,” the company further pointed out.
“A thorough disinfection of all areas where the affected individuals have been was also carried out by a third-party professional provider.”
As a result, some production lines have temporarily shut down, of which the capacity loss is estimated to be less than 0.5% of the company’s annual output.
Commenting on the latest outcome, Hartalega CEO Kuan Mun Leong said putting in place stringent measures has enabled the company to record a significantly low infection rate of only 0.4% of all its employees.
“This is significantly lower than the positive rates of other similar factories,” he pointed out.
The company has a stringent in-house standard since March 2020 to monitor potential COVID-19 cases at its dedicated in-house sickbay.
Through its in-house Hartalega Precautionary Investigation (HPI) procedure, immediate action is taken to quarantine and conduct polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests on any primary, secondary and in some cases even the tertiary contacts of any suspected cases. – Dec 14, 2020
