Sabahan gets vaccination date in Penang

 

The MySejahtera app gave this man in Kota Kinabalu a vaccination appointment in Penang. (Sabah DAP pic)

KOTA KINABALU: At a time when inter-district travel is banned, and no one can go more than 10km from their homes, a man in Kota Kinabalu has been given a vaccination appointment – in Kepala Batas in mainland Penang.

Sabah DAP secretary Chan Foong Hin says this was one of two complaints from Sabahans over their vaccination appointment, blaming glitches in their MySejahtera app.

Chan, who is also Kota Kinabalu MP, said in the first case, a resident in Luyang here complained that the app fixed his vaccination appointment in Kudat, over 300km north of the state capital.

“The second case was even worse. It involved a resident in Kota Kinabalu, who received a notice from MySejahtera stating that his vaccination would be in Penang,” he said.

According to Chan, the man had been given a vaccination appointment at Dewan Milenium Kepala Batas in Seberang Perai Utara on June 9.

He said both cases have been escalated to Sabah health director Dr Christina Rundi and that the latter had promised to assist the complainants in changing the location of their vaccination centres.

Another man residing in Kota Kinabalu had his appointment fixed in Kudat, over 300km away. (Sabah DAP pic)

As such, he demanded science, technology and innovation minister Khairy Jamaluddin ensure the issue with MySejahtera is effectively resolved, so as to prevent further errors.

“How can MySejahtera, which is said to have cost millions of ringgit, suffer from such fundamental errors?” he asked.

Chan said the party has been mobilising its members to assist the people to register for Covid-19 vaccinations through MySejahtera and help the government speed up the immunisation programme.

“But I am sad to say that such an elementary error will certainly lead to lower confidence in the application and frustrate the country’s Covid-19 vaccination drive.”

Meanwhile, Chan said there were many elderly people and patients with comorbidities still left waiting for the notice for vaccination to come through MySejahtera.

This is despite the fact that they are listed as the priority group in the second phase of the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme, he added.

He recalled that Masidi Manjun, who is Sabah’s official Covid-19 spokesman, had announced earlier this year that the state’s vaccination plan was to commence on Feb 26 and will take up to a year to complete.

“The target was to vaccinate three million people in Sabah. On that basis, in Sabah alone an average of 250,000 people would have to be vaccinated every month, continuously for 12 months.

“However, as of May 31, less than 150,000 people have been vaccinated in Sabah. How can we reach the target within a year?” he asked.

Meanwhile, Khairy was reported as saying yesterday that the issue of wrong vaccination centres being assigned had been resolved.

According to him, many people were assigned to other states for vaccination because of a problem with the Google Maps API utilised by MySejahtera.

He said additional features have been added to the app where users can now confirm details of their address, including their state and postal codes. - FMT