International borders likely to reopen in December, says PM

 

Ismail Sabri Yaakob said he was also pushing for daily travel between Singapore and Johor to be allowed as soon as possible. (Bernama pic)

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysians wishing to travel abroad can likely do so in December, according to Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob.

In an interview with selected senior editors last week, Ismail said the government will consider reopening Malaysia’s international borders once 90% of the adults complete their Covid-19 vaccination.

“Yes, December is possible. It is still too early at the moment. We will open the state borders first before allowing international travel,” Mingguan Malaysia quoted him as saying.

“State borders will be opened in two weeks as currently 85.5% of the adults have been vaccinated.”

Ismail said Malaysians need not apply for the MyTravelPass (MTP) for international travel anymore but the quarantine rules will remain.

Asked on discussions with Singapore on allowing workers to travel daily from Johor Bahru so that their lives could return to normal, he said the discussions between the two countries on the Reciprocal Green Lane (RGL) was discontinued by the republic.

“I have asked the Johor menteri besar to continue talks with Singapore on the RGL as it involves hundreds of thousands of workers who have been suffering for more than a year now,” he said.

On another matter, Ismail hoped no Cabinet ministers would be dropped for not performing in the first 100 days of their appointment.

He said all the reports of the ministers will be assessed to see if they had the “wow” factor when dealing with the rakyat, adding that this will be among their Key Performance Indicator (KPI) targets.

“I gave them 100 days to perform and I hope they do. Their report must also be based on the performance of their ministries. I did not set this target to sack ministers,” he said.

Ismail said ministers will also be evaluated based on the feedback from social media and whether the people accept them.

“I will also be grading them personally besides a committee that will be looking at it. But the people too are going to assess them. This means the people’s view will also be a factor when assessing the performances by the ministers,” he said.

“There will be professionals assessing the ministers on social media. They do the study but I am also a keen reader of comments on social media.”

On the people’s acceptance of him as the prime minister so far, he said no studies had been done on this yet since he took over from Muhyiddin Yassin more than a month ago.

“It is too early to tell. Sometimes, leaders are liked during their early days in power but end up being disliked later. There are others who are disliked in the beginning but as time goes by, they begin to like them.” - FMT