National Recovery Plan's success needs support from all parties - Muhyiddin

 

For the National Recovery Plan (NRP) to succeed in helping Malaysia out of the Covid-19 crisis, all parties need to support it as it is a "whole of nation approach" rather than a "whole of government" one, said Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin.

He said the country should not be seen as having failed to deal with the pandemic as the government had just started the NRP, adding that achievements will take time as the plan cannot yield results in just a week or month.

“It takes a bit of a long painful recovery but I do believe and have confidence that we will survive the test. Give the government a chance for this," he said in a special interview with the media in Putrajaya today.

On June 15, Muhyiddin announced the NRP, which has four phases that will transition in stages.

It is guided by three indicators for moving from one phase to the next. They include the number of daily infection cases, the rate of bed use in the Intensive Care Units (ICUs), and the percentage of the population who have been fully vaccinated.

He said Malaysia was one of the first countries to submit a comprehensive recovery plan.

The country is now facing a dynamic situation with the emergence of new variants, he said, which requires the government to manage it quickly, systematically, and transparently.

This includes increasing the vaccination rate, especially in the Klang Valley area as 50 percent of daily Covid-19 cases are from Selangor and Kuala Lumpur, he said.

Muhyiddin said so far eight states had entered Phase Two of the NRP, and expects Sarawak to be among the earliest states to move to Phase Three due to its high vaccination rate and good health control.

In addition, increasing vaccination rates through Operation Surge Capacity to ensure that all adults in the Klang Valley receive at least one dose of the vaccine by August 1 can also help flatten the infection curve, he said.

On the high number of infections in the Klang Valley, the prime minister said the 'Greater Klang Valley Task Force' had been set up and is led by Health Ministry deputy director-general (Public Health) Dr Chong Chee Kheong to strengthen the preparedness of the health system in the Klang Valley to manage the pandemic.

He said providing adequate ICU beds, transferring non-Covid-19 cases to private hospitals, and classifying more government hospitals specifically for Covid-19 treatment were among the measures taken by the task force.

The prime minister said the government had channeled a significant increase in expenditure to the Ministry of Health, more than RM70 billion since March 2020, to manage the pandemic.

He said the additional allocation was the highest increase in Malaysia's history in a short period of time due to the health crisis.

"Indeed we have suffered for years... underinvestment in the public health system which this government is trying to correct now. I am not putting any blame on the previous administration but the fact is that we did not pay more attention to our healthcare issues and hospital facilities.

“The hospitals may look nice, but there are not enough beds, not enough ICU equipment, insufficient ventilators, and not enough oxygen. Not having enough (of all these) has never happened in our history. This is the reality, and we can’t deny this,” he said.

Muhyiddin also expressed his appreciation to all healthcare frontliners who are struggling with the Covid-19 pandemic, and also apologised to all parties who have been impacted by the health crisis.

- Bernama