Below are two quotes from Malaysiakini reports yesterday. The first: “Workers of at least two factories and one office in non-essential sectors, located in areas under the enhanced movement control order (MCO) in Selangor, have received letters allowing them to operate.
"According to the Malaysian Trades Union Congress (MTUC), the letters were issued by the International Trade and Industry Ministry (Miti) on July 4, allowing operations to start from July 5.
"MTUC’s Selangor and Federal Territories chairperson Wan Noorulazhar Mohd Hanafiah said the division received complaints from workers of two electronic factories and one research division of a company in a non-essential sector.
The factories and offices are located in Klang and Teluk Panglima Garang in Kuala Langat, both districts under an enhanced MCO.”
The second: “Earlier today, Malaysiakini quoted an International Trade and Industry Ministry (Miti) source saying that a letter for Top Glove to operate in an enhanced MCO area has been revoked.
"The source said it was revoked because they are not on the list of essential services in the NSC's SOP. During a system configuration, some companies were able to download the (approval) letter but they still can't use the letter because the SOP supersedes everything," the source added.
"Malaysiakini had earlier sighted Miti's Covid-19 Intelligent Management System (Cims) letter for Top Glove to operate its factory in Klang. The Miti source stressed that Cims letters for non-essential companies to operate in these areas are not valid.”
Once again, confusion reigns supreme. It appears the government’s left hand either does not know what its right hand is doing or simply does not care.
Either way, it’s bad news for the rakyat. International Trade and Industry Minister Azmin Ali is in charge of giving out approvals for which businesses can operate.
He has long been extremely unpopular. Indeed, he has turned off all the comments on his social media accounts - no doubt because whatever he posts there is just drowned in the rage of angry netizens.
One of the biggest problems we have in this entire Covid-19 fight is transparency. I like to think that it’s part of my job to follow the news, and I’m in more WhatsApp groups than I can count.
But I still don’t know, for example, where the real bottleneck in vaccination is. Is it the supply of vaccines? Is it distribution and deployment? Is it registration? I have no idea.
Similarly, I have no idea which factories or businesses are allowed to open and why. All I know is that we keep seeing high numbers related to factory clusters, and news reports like the ones quoted above.
Vague 'essential services'
Bad governments always like to keep people in the dark. The less we know, the easier it is for them to get away with policies that hurt the rakyat but enrich the politicians making them.
If Azmin refuses to publish the list of factories and big businesses he is allowing to operate and where they are, surely the rakyat cannot be blamed for thinking that there is something suspicious and corrupt going on.
This is after all the very same ministry and government that allowed the Genting Highlands casinos to operate in the middle of a pandemic. A truly insane policy.
No matter what we do to fight Covid-19, it’s not going to make a damned difference if the minister keeps being vague and unclear about which businesses qualify as ‘essential services’ even in areas where other people are literally trapped in by barbed wire.
Speaking of which, I don’t imagine too many of us here have experienced what it’s like to be behind barbed wire. The mental stress it creates is likely to be hard for most of us to imagine.
Those of us who are under a relatively mild form of MCO already find it very stressful to be ‘forced' to stay at home so much, even without the barbed wire.
Seeing those sharp things that could rip your body to shreds outside your house? That’s another level of mental stress entirely. And we haven’t even begun to talk about the fact that most of these people now cannot work and earn a living - a fact that is probably the biggest contributor to extreme mental stress.
It’s one thing if all of us as a united nation had to face such mental stress together for a shared purpose. It’s another thing when barbed wire is only put around the poorest people in Malaysia, as has clearly been the case.
I suspect this is not because infectivity in those areas is exponentially higher than in richer areas. Maybe it is because poor people have fewer means to fight back and kick up a storm.
So there is one enhanced MCO for the poor and another for the rich. The poorest Malaysians risk arrest and bodily harm should they try to move, while politicians get to accompany their sons all the way to France, supposedly because in France they have ‘free schooling’.
And who do we think are the Malaysians that have been committing suicide in record-breaking numbers? Is it the rich? Or is it the poor who live in exactly the kinds of areas we are fencing up with barbed wires?
Do these barbed wires even really work to bring numbers down? Or do they reduce the cases by one percent while open factories increase them by 10 percent?
Is it just an action taken to make it look like politicians are ‘doing something’ on the one hand while profiting from allowing non-essential factories to operate on the other?
Health system on brink of collapse
Let’s not forget the situation that is being faced by medical frontliners.
I am starting to hear from people I have not heard from in months and almost years. There is less and less doubt that more and more feel the health system in the Klang Valley is nearing collapse.
When we need a 110 km/h solution to escape Covid-19 infectivity that’s moving at 100 km/h but the authorities seem to be moving at 10 km/h.
When medical frontliners want to speak up about the truth on the ground in Covid hospitals, they are slapped down and threatened by their superiors.
When they want to ask the public for help for more equipment to fight Covid, the hospitals issue stern denials saying that they do not need help.
I don’t like alarmists, and I try my best not to be one.
But there comes a time when our choice is to raise the alarm and go to red alert or watch the ship go down without a fight. If the captain and the officers won’t do it, then we have to do it ourselves.
Let’s start by calling for transparency from the International Trade and Industry Ministry and insist that they immediately publish a list of all companies who have been given the approval to operate.
If this government is as serious as they say about fighting Covid-19, they should be transparent and prove it. - Mkini
NATHANIEL TAN is a strategic communications consultant who works with Projek Wawasan Rakyat (POWR). Twitter: @NatAsasi, Clubhouse: @Nathaniel_Tan, Email: nat@engage.my. #BangsaMalaysia #NextGenDemocracy.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.
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