It was unprofessional of Universiti Malaya’s management to get student volunteers without relevant experience and training to carry out the Covid-19 isolation exercise for students from China.
Suara Siswa UM spokesman Yap Wen Ching rightly pointed out that this “should have been done by external parties such as the health authorities, not university volunteers”.
If any of the student volunteers get infected with the Covid-19 virus, is the university’s management going to bear the responsibility?
Moreover, the management had chosen the wrong place for the isolation exercise. The Tun Ahmad Zaidi Residential College (also known as the 10th Residential College) is not suitable for it.
The space is limited and the students need to share their rooms with other fellow students from their country. There is also only one shared bathroom on each floor. That means several students have to use the same bathroom space and this increases the chances for them to get infected.
There is also no proper designated disposal area for used face masks. The university should have instead chosen a few bungalows around the campus under its ownership for the isolation exercise.
To make matters worse, as Yap revealed, “these students from China, who were supposed to be in isolation, were allowed to roam around the university campus”.
According to UM’s management, they were allowed to move around freely if they did not show any symptoms of the disease. It seems that the management does not realise that the incubation period of the disease can be up to 14 days or more. Even if the students do not show any symptoms at present, it does not necessarily mean they are free from the virus. Such a lenient policy only increases the chances for the disease to be spread in the campus.
It is sad that the university’s management has not been responsible and professional enough to assign tasks to personnel according to their knowledge and experience.
All these should not have happened if UM is a genuinely top university in Malaysia, as the management has always claimed.
The university’s management must mend the blunder by paying the volunteers compensation for handling tasks outside their job scope, and fully cover any medical costs if they get infected or show symptoms of the disease.
The university must also make sure that all task assignments should be strictly based on the personnel’s knowledge and experience.
Concerned Citizen is an FMT reader.
covid is not just a social problem anymore. People are literally coming to streets. Most have drenched their savings and things are not getting any good.
ReplyDeleteAround the world, it is expected that over 50 million people will lose their jobs because of this global crisis.