THE Labuan Economic Sector Coalition (LESC) criticised Government officials for enacting COVID-19 standard operating procedure (SOP) at Labuan Island without proper consultation with relevant stakeholders.
“SOPs should be made by engaging all stakeholders including the industries affected to understand our challenges and business flow.
“Without such discussion, it would only lead to a lot of assumptions made by civil servants in SOP preparation.
“As such, we find Labuan Disaster Management Committee’s decision (LDMC) to not engage with us in the economic sectors as irresponsible and doesn’t reflect the spirit of the National Recovery Plan (NRP), which is to balance between economy and public health,” it said in a statement.
Two days ago, Bernama reported the LDMC saying that it had prepared SOPs for shipping-related sectors to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 on the duty-free island.
Labuan Health Department director Dr Ismuni Bohari said the SOPs had been submitted to the National Security Council (NSC) for approval.
“The SOPs for the shipping-related sectors had been thoroughly discussed with all relevant Government agencies, taking into account the possible causes of spreading COVID-19, the people’s safety and the continuity of the economic sectors,” he was reported saying.
Ismuni said the preparation of the SOPs is on Putrajaya’s hands, after taking into consideration the increase of positive cases nationwide.
“We have taken into account the concerns of the shipping industry, therefore, the 21 days of quarantine for foreign ships and 14 days for domestic ships has been reduced to 14 and 10 days, respectively,” he added.
Long-term negative effect
However, LESC was unimpressed with Ismuni’s assertions and called it a “fatal mistake”, claiming many of the SOPs set were inoperable as local and foreign vessels are now avoiding Labuan as the port of call.
“For starters, we would like to state that only the ‘SOP SIGN-ON /SIGN-OFF’ requirement is acceptable to the members, while the ‘SOP KEMASUKAN KAPAL’ should be revoked.
“If the special Labuan SOP, particularly the ‘SOP KEMASUKAN KAPAL’, is the best way to curb COVID-19 from spreading, then we encourage NSC to implement the same SOP that is imposed here to all the other ports in Malaysia. This is to ensure that Labuan Island is not being discriminated,” they opined.
While acknowledging the risks COVID-19 brings to the community, LESC stressed the need for all parties to find a proper “balancing act” to ensure the livelihoods of port workers are not affected.
“LESC is expected to see businesses halt their operations, impose massive pay cuts and impose a major retrenchment exercise across the industry sector in Labuan.
“We have attempted to reach out and repeatedly warned concerned parties that failing to do an early corrective measure will create an irreversible long term negative economic impact on Labuan, if status quo remains within the next one to two weeks,” it mentioned.
LESC also urged health officials to stop targetting the shipping industry by generalising the COVID-19 cases detected there, without providing details to it.
“Such action indirectly presents itself as fear-mongering and doesn’t scientifically help in reducing COVID-19 cases in Labuan.
“We call for more professionalism in dealing with the matter, and expect more accurate details to be disseminated,” it concluded.
Among the signatories of the statement were Labuan Freight Forwarders Association, Sabah Shipping Agent Association, Sabah Flour and Feed Mills and Petronas. – Aug 21, 2021
