Chong during his Facebook live session today.
KUCHING (May 2): The State Legislative Assembly (DUN) should convene to deliberate on how Sarawak should purchase its own Covid-19 vaccine and keep Sarawakians informed about the immunisation process, said Democratic Action Party (DAP) Sarawak chairman Chong Chieng Jen.
The Kota Sentosa assemblyman said Local Government and Housing Minister Dato Sri Dr Sim Kui Hian had announced on Feb 10, even before the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (NCIP) was rolled out, that Sarawak would purchase its own vaccine.
“Only a month later, on March 18, (Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi) Abang Johari (Tun Openg) said the state government had sent a letter to the coordinating minister of the NCIP Khairy (Jamaluddin) to seek approval of purchasing our own vaccine.
“It took 40 days for you to write a letter? If you don’t know how to draft the letter, come get help from me, shouldn’t take 40 days. And then the federal government granted the approval on April 23, almost a month later,” he said during his regular Facebook live session today.
Chong, who is Stampin MP, said a DUN meeting should take place to inform Sarawakians of how the state government is going to purchase the vaccine such as from which supplier.
“There are so many suppliers, Pfizer, Sinovac, CanSino, Moderna, Spunik and AstraZeneca even though the state government has said to reject AstraZeneca.
“Most suppliers are dealing with countries and the volume they are selling is huge, can Sarawak government squeeze in to purchase? Will they supply to Sarawak? Pricing is a factor because some suppliers will sell to a higher bidder.
“All these the state government should keep the people informed and not keeping us in the dark. We can give our full cooperation,” he pointed out.
Asserting that nothing stops Sarawak from convening its DUN meeting, Chong said the Yang di-Pertuan Agong had openly said that there was nothing wrong to hold Parliament sessions during this Emergency Order.
As such, Chong called on the state government to call a DUN meeting to inform Sarawakians of its plan on the purchase of vaccine.
When the first phase of the NCIP was rolled out late February, he said Sarawak had announced that this would cover 97,161 frontliners at the state-level.
Despite so, he said the state health director had recently announced that only over 56,000 individuals had completed both doses of the vaccine as of April 29.
“Does this mean that not all frontliners have been vaccinated? If this is the case, we are far from achieving our target of getting at least 70 per cent of Sarawakians vaccinated by August,” he said.
Stressing that the fight against Covid-19 is an urgent fight, Chong said the state government should not wait any longer but to convene a DUN meeting.
“There must be a sense of urgency to tackle this issue. There is none other than providing more vaccines for Sarawakians to fight this pandemic. Vaccination is a more effective means to fight this pandemic so that we can go back to normalcy.
“We are all here together in this fight against Covid-19. We hope the government can be more transparent to all of us so that we are well informed and can give our fullest cooperation,” he added.