- Wartawan Nabalu News
DAP URGES SABAH GOVT TO INTRODUCE ITS OWN RECOVERY PLAN
24 June 2021
By Wartawan Nabalu News
KOTA KINABALU: The Sabah Government has been urged to introduce its own health and economic recovery plan according to the state's pandemic situation.
DAP's Kota Kinabalu MP Chan Foong Hin and Luyang State Assemblyman Phoong Jin Zhe said Sabah should stick with its own plan and not follow the National Recovery Plan as the Covid-19 situation in the state has been improving over the last three days with less than 200 daily cases recorded.
Prime Minister Tan Sri Mahiaddin Yasin previously announced that the National Recovery Plan would allow the reopening of partial economic sectors provided that the nation records a daily case below 4,000.
"In our opinion, the state government should take a different approach as Sabah’s situation is improving in comparison to other states.
"The Sabah State Government must take a few crucial factors into consideration while planning the state’s own recovery plan. The plan must state clearly which sectors are allowed to reopen in every phase with strict standard operating procedures (SOPs)," they said in a joint statement, Wednesday.
Chan and Phoong also reckoned that dine-in should be allowed after the end date of the Movement Control Order (MCO) 3.0 considering the current contained situation in Sabah.
"The government should also understand the financial hardships of the people and consider to reopen economic sectors such as hairdresser, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chiropractic, Physiotherapy, beauty salons, boutiques and others with strict SOPs.
"However, social activities and events must be strictly prohibited to prevent any unnecessary clusters."
On the recently launched Zero Covid-19 campaign, they agreed with the efforts of speeding up the vaccination programme where Chief Minister Datuk Hajiji Noor mentioned that the state aims to vaccinate 30,000 people a day starting July.
In hope that the government will fulfil its promises to speed up the vaccination programme, the DAP lawmakers also stressed that critical sector employees should be prioritised as well as they are categorised as high-risk groups.
Meanwhile, they said the vaccination rate has decreased almost twice the amount compared to the week before and that it would be hard to achieve the goal of 30,000 jabs per day.
"If Sabah is going to reopen partial economic sectors after June 28, the vaccination rate must speed up. Instead of setting a goal on paper, we would like to question the state government on what are the efforts by the government to ensure that we are on track?
"We would also like to urge everyone to register for the vaccine to help the state to achieve herd immunity as soon as possible to curb this pandemic and restore our life back to pre-Covid-19."
