THE move to ease certain border restrictions, reopen the economy and allow schools to recommence in stages from Sept 1 are good decisions from the Government’s end, said former minister Tan Sri Rafidah Aziz.
This is due to the negative impact of the nation’s various movement control orders on the economy, the society, and on children’s education.
There are, however, several questions that the Government must address beforehand, she said in a Facebook post dated Aug 9.
“Has the Government actually put into place all the necessary precautions and protective measures to ensure that the COVID-19 pandemic and all its variants would not be facilitated by sheer carelessness and the lack of thorough thinking-through?” she asked.
Rafidah was referring to the Government’s recent move to relax inter-district travel restrictions for individuals who had been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 in areas placed under Phase 2 of the National Recovery Plan (NRP).
“When a person who has had two doses of vaccines crosses borders to reunite with their spouse, what happens when that person, who is an untested and asymptomatic carrier of the COVID-19 virus unwittingly transmits the virus to their spouse, their vulnerable parents and whomever they come into contact with?” she asked.
“Has the Government laid out mandatory safety standard operating procedures (SOPs) such as pre- and post-travel testing for every one of those individuals, or is the Government ‘okay’ with the possible sprouting of new clusters that would further exhaust our healthcare personnel and frontliners?”
As for the reopening of business premises, Rafidah questioned if the Government has mandated that every outlet that has been – and will soon be – allowed to operate has had every employee tested, vaccinated and re-tested regularly.
“There is no need to set a 60% at the workplace quota for employees. Instead, the workforce should be allowed to operate at 100% but with mandatory testing, vaccination and regular rapid re-testing for everybody in the premises,” she added.
Rafidah also opined that the Government should forget about the ‘essential’ and non-essential’ categorisations.
“Every business is very essential business because it involves someone’s livelihood, upon which families are dependent on.
“Is the Government saying that the hundreds of thousands of people who are already out of jobs are from the non-essential category?
“And what about those who have committed suicide out of desperation? Were they ‘non-essential’ too?”
Meanwhile, on the reopening of schools in stages from Sept 1, Rafidah questioned if the Government has had every school, classroom, library, cafeteria, activity area and school compound physically installed and outfitted with the necessary safeguards to ensure the safety of student against the infection and spread of COVID-19.
“Have proper disinfection measures been put into place at every school? Has every person that has to do with every school, directly or otherwise, been tested, vaccinated and readied for regular rapid re-testing?”
The people that Rafidah was referring to included teachers, office and administration staff, supporting staff, cafeteria employees, school bus rivers and helpers, gardeners and security personnel.
“My advice to the Government is that unless all precautions, safeguards and mandatory processes are in place, schools should remain closed.
“The nation cannot put our young in peril and exposed to the COVID-19 pandemic and its new variants,” she remarked, adding that this is not the time to ‘massage’ policies for political expedience and ‘brownie points’.
“Lives are at stake, whether looking at it from the healthcare, economic, social or human angles.” – Aug 10, 2021.
