Kelantan Exco man denies vaccine queue jumping claims

 

The Kelantan State Exco for Local Government, Housing and Health has denied the allegation that 200 members of the state’s secretary office are jumping the queue to receive the Covid-19 vaccination.

Its chairperson Dr Izani Husin claimed that a report that was viralled on social media was untrue and done with malicious intent.

He said the state government has never interfered with the process of determining recipients of the Covid-19 vaccine in the state which was carried out by its health department (JKNK).

"As the person who handles this matter (vaccination), I do not discuss any list of names and have never put pressure on the JKNK to give the injection to the leaders first before giving it to the frontliners," he said when contacted by Bernama.

Yesterday, Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Khairy Jamaluddin called for whistleblowers to come forward amid more complaints of alleged attempts to jump the queue for the Covid-19 vaccine.

He said this in response to consultant physician and nephrologist Dr Rafidah Abdullah who highlighted complaints that officials from the Kelantan state secretariat were trying to jump the queue.

Malaysiakini previously also highlighted complaints from staff at Serdang Hospital, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they could face disciplinary action, about a proposal to prioritise hospital administrators and influencers but the Health Ministry dismissed this as "fake news".

Since then, this news portal had received two more similar complaints, one related to the Kelantan state secretariat as highlighted by Rafidah and another in Penang involving senior district officials.

"I view this queue-jumping issue seriously. I have informed the matter to Health Ministry director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah to ensure no queue-jumping.

"Whistleblowers can email anonymously directly to me at kj@mosti.gov.my and I will investigate," Khairy said on Twitter.

The minister added that his team has been monitoring complaints of vaccine queue-jumping on social media.

"We take every exposé seriously. Vaccine equity is important," he said.

Earlier, Rafidah shared a message claiming that the Kelantan state secretariat had asked for 200 doses of vaccines to be reserved for 200 officials.

The message claimed that the state secretariat had refused to reveal the list of who will be vaccinated until the day of vaccination itself.

It added that this meant that medical frontliners who needed the vaccine had to be pushed back. - Mkini