Firms contracted to work in public hospitals are responsible for getting their staff vaccinated against Covid-19, Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said today.
However, it is not clear if the Health Ministry will impose penalties if such firms fail to comply.
Opposition MPs, meanwhile, have proposed that the ministry compels its contractors to inoculate employees by making it a policy and contractual obligation.
This comes after an unvaccinated contract cleaner at Hospital Tengku Ampuan Rahimah (HTAR) in Klang died of the virus on July 22.
The 36-year-old Indonesian woman began working at the Covid-stricken public hospital in June 2021. She was hospitalised for Covid-19 on July 12 and died 10 days later, despite being put on a ventilator that day.
Responding to this woman’s death, Noor Hisham tweeted that the ministry had already “instructed” all Covid-19 hospital workers to be vaccinated.
This included cleaners who were hired by concessionaire companies.
The top official later told Malaysiakini that these instructions were issued back when the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (NIP) began.
“When we started vaccination for NIP Phase 1, we included all staff working in Covid-19 wards and Intensive Care Units (ICUs),” he said, adding that cleaners at such wards were also to be jabbed.
Phase 1 was from February to April.
“The onus is on the companies to make sure all their workers get vaccinated as (per) our guidelines,” he added.
Any penalty?
As of publication time, Noor Hisham had yet to answer further questions on whether there was a penalty for concessionaire companies that failed to vaccinate their workers.
He was also yet to provide data on the number of hospital support and contract workers who were not fully vaccinated against Covid-19.
In the case of the late HTAR cleaner, she had been employed by subcontractor Harta Maintenance Sdn Bhd and contractor Radicare (M) Sdn Bhd.
Radicare previously told Malaysiakini that it could not provide information on the matter.
HTAR director Dr Zulkarnain Mohd Rawi, meanwhile, had directed all questions about the cleaner to Radicare.
The National Union of Workers in Hospital Support and Allied Services (NUWHSAS) had questioned why Radicare and Harta Maintenance failed to get the frontliner vaccinated.
It demanded that the ministry compensates and assists family members of cleaners who contracted Covid-19 at work and died.
Make it policy, contractual
In a comment to Malaysiakini, Bandar Kuching MP Dr Kelvin Yii urged the ministry to compel concessionaires to inoculate their staff.
“While it may be the onus of the concessionaire companies to get their workers vaccinated, I believe the ministry should have taken the extra step to compel them to do so, especially when it involves workers being exposed to high-risk environments,” he said.
Yii, who holds a medical degree but does not practice medicine, chairs the Health, Science and Innovation Parliamentary Select Committee.
He agreed with the union’s stance that the ministry should compensate the families of frontliners who died of Covid-19.
“I feel there is a joint responsibility from the government to equitably compensate the workers' families.
“And more importantly, to come up with a policy to make sure such an incident does not happen again, including taking action against companies that do not enforce this properly,” Yii said.
Meanwhile, DAP lawmaker Charles Santiago proposed that the ministry stipulates in the contracts with its contractors that workers must be fully vaccinated.
Not only that, firms must also routinely test workers and bear the costs of such tests.
“Make it contractual.
“We have the pandemic in front of us and the infectious laws still exist, you can use that to argue it is time for everybody to get vaccinated and tested,” Charles said.
Compulsory for the undocumented
Charles, whose constituency Klang includes HTAR, further proposed that the ministry make it compulsory for subcontractors to fully vaccinate their workers as well.
This was regardless of workers’ immigration status.
“A lot of these subcontractors use undocumented migrant workers to work.
“So they (the workers) might have difficulty getting vaccinated or they might find it difficult to show evidence (of identification) if they are undocumented workers.
“This is the problem that has to be dealt with by the subcontractors,” Charles added. - Mkini
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