KUALA LUMPUR: The Federation of Chinese Associations Malaysia (Huazong) has called on the Government to quickly set up a Special Taskforce to monitor and to assist the business sector to strictly adhere to the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) set by the authorities.
Its president, Tan Sri T.C Goh said this is necessary and crucial in order to ensure a safe working environment for the employers and the workers and to prevent the rebound of Coronavirus. This was following the Government’s announcement that almost all economic sectors and business activities will be allowed to resume operations starting May 4, subject to the terms and the SOP set by the authorities.
He also proposed that the Government should consider maintaining its current policy of allowing businesses in the Green Zones to resume operations first, in order to have better control of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as to avoid confusion among the people.
“While the Covid-19 outbreak in our country is gradually slowing down, and the Government started to adopt the “soft landing” approach in allowing economic sectors to reopen in stages, it should continue to remain vigilant. First and foremost, the Government must ensure that businesses strictly comply with the SOP set by the authorities. This is very important so as not to waste all the efforts and resources deployed by the Government and the people in fighting Covid-19.
“The ongoing Covid-19 crisis is essentially a matter of “life and death”. Hence, it is absolutely important that we must control the pandemic first. We must not allow the ‘chain of infection’ to revive, just because we wanted to revive our economy,” he said in a statement issued today.
He thus supported the Government’s move to continue to ‘lockdown’ the country to prevent the ‘import’ of Covid-19 from outside, describing it as a right move.
On some dissenting voices against the Government’s relaxing of the Movement Control Order (MCO), Goh said in principal, Huazong is not against such a move as it was made after taking into serious considerations of the need to strike a balance, between the need to safeguard public health and to keep the economy moving.
He said, following the Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin announcement of the conditional relaxing of the MCO, Huazong has been receiving both feedback and inquiries from its member association, the Chinese community and the business sector on the said move. Huazong has thus compiled them into a 20-point proposal for the Government’s attention, as follows:
· Fighting Covid-19
1. Government to fully comply with the six criteria set by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in order for the MCO to be lifted. The six are border control; movement control; the healthcare system, including a sufficient number of wards and labs; action to protect the high-risk groups; putting the “new normal” into practice; and implementing preventive measures in a community.
2. To continue to impose ‘lock down’ on the country and to require Malaysians who returned from overseas to undergo quarantine.
3. To establish a Special Taskforce to ensure and assist the business sector comply with the SOP set by the authorities while operating in the conditionally-relaxed MCO.
4. To consider allowing businesses to reopen in stages, with priority given to those in the Green Zones, similar to the approach of allowing varsity students from the Green Zones to return to families who are also in the Green Zones, to be on safe side.
5. To step up prevention of Covid-19 by ramping up tests, contact tracing, and quarantine exercises in identified hot spots and those areas currently under Enhanced Movement Control Order (EMCO), to beef up border control, and to take effective measures to contain the spread of Coronavirus in residential areas which are known to be predominantly occupied by migrant workers, both legal and illegal.
6. And in the event of a worsening Covid-19 transmission, to quickly adopt appropriate measures including tightening or extending of the MCO.
· Business Sector
1. To emulate Singapore in enacting the Covid-19 (Temporary Measures) Bill to provide necessary and reasonable legal protection to individuals and companies unable to fulfil their contractual obligations because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
2. In the event that MCO is further extended, the ‘Wage Subsidy Scheme’ (WSS) too should be extended, accordingly.
3. The number of workers in a company should not be limited to 200 workers under the WSS, and workers who are registered with the Social Security Organisation (Perkeso) too be entitled to WSS.
4. Federal government should take serious note of the confusion and inconvenience caused by non-compliance of its directives, policies and Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) by certain states, such as Selangor, Kedah, Sabah and Sarawak, in regards to conditional reopening of business sector.
5. Government should also take note of the dispute and inconvenience created by SOP imposed on certain businesses, such as requiring the eateries and restaurants to obtain the name and contact number of their customers, which some customers considered a violation of their privacy.
· Finance
1. Government to ramp up the allocations for the various aid schemes catered to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) through the ‘Prihatin Rakyat Economic Stimulus Package’, to allow more businesses which are affected by the pandemic to obtain financing at low or zero interest. Such aid schemes include the Special Relief Facility (SRF) which provides maximum loan amount up to RM1 million per SME at financing rate of 3.5% per annum; and the Micro/i Kredit Prihatin scheme administered by the Bank Simpanan Nasional (BSN) which provides loan amount up to RM75,000 at interest free.
2. Proposes all commercial banks to automatically extend the six months moratorium on loan repayment, and not to impose any interest or compounded interest. Banks should also consider further reducing the existing loan interest to help the borrowers to get through this difficult time.
· Workforce
1. Government to pay greater attention to pressing issues affecting the employees such as retrenchment, pay-cut, or being forced to take unpaid leave. Besides the existing Employment Insurance System (EIS), and Employment Retention Program (ERP) administered by Perkeso, the WSS and the one-time cash aid, the Government should also provide other incentives to encourage employers to retain their workers.
2. Proposes the Ministry of Human Resources and the relevant government agencies to re-examine and to recalibrate the existing labour force to better meet the market demand, and to assist those who lost their jobs to secure new employment.
3. And, to re-examine the over dependence of migrant workers in a certain economic sectors, such as agriculture, food and beverage industry, small businesses, and certain skill sectors, and to take necessary measures to enable more Malaysians to work in these sectors.
· Other Issues
1. To form a trans departments Special Committee to expedite the drafting of an “effective-and-comprehensive” post Covid-19 economy recovery plan, in order to prepare the people and the economic sectors to better embrace the ‘new normal’ ahead.
2. If the MCO is further extended, the Government should also ramp up the various aid schemes to assist the people to get through this difficult situation.
3. Government should also provide psychiatric counseling and treatment to those who were devastated by the Covid-19 and MCO. They included those who have lost their income and livelihood, those suffering from domestic violence, divorce, depression, anxiety and etc.
4. Government should also bring down the fares of public transportation such as the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT), railway transport, monorail, KLIA transit, and urban bus service, by half, until the MCO is fully lifted, to ease the people’s financial burden.
“The country loses around RM2.4 billion for each day of the MCO, and to-date, losses is estimated to be more than RM65 billion (equivalent of a quarter of the RM250 billion Prihatin Rakyat Economic Stimulus Package). Hence, it is important that the Government, the business sector and the people must continue to support and help each other to fight and contain the pandemic, to ensure that there won’t be another cluster transmission of Covid-19 which may further devastate our economy and our livelihood,” Goh concluded.-pr/BNN
