A new Parliamentary select committee not needed to address rising COVID-19 cases.
COVID-19 issues come under the purview of the Health Ministry and are therefore within the special select committee for health, science technology and innovation, Dewan Rakyat Speaker Datuk Azhar Azizan Harun told FocusM today.
“Therefore issues relating to this pandemic should be under the purview of this select committee, eliminating the need to setup a separate select Parliamentary committee to address issues pertaining to this pandemic.
“We are focusing on ministerial based select committee and not interest base anymore.”
He said this in reaction to Iskandar Puteri MP Lim Kit Siang’s suggestion to convene an urgent meeting to establish select committees on the pandemic, as numbers continue to rise.
Lim said the proposed select committee could meet after the Dewan Rakyat adjourns on Thursday, to conduct public hearings on why the COVID-19 cases are soaring.
“The authorities had failed to adopt an ‘all-of-government’ and ‘whole-of-society’ approach which resulted in the spike in COVID-19 cases,” he claimed.
The DAP leader then named Dzulkefly to chair the proposed committee, adding that other members should be of those with expertise to deal with the pandemic.
Malaysia has been hitting four-digit new COVID-19 infection cases on a daily basis since late last month, with the number breaching the 2,000 mark several times.
To date, Selangor counts for nearly half of the daily new infection cases. – Dec 13, 2020.
