Voon Shiak Ni
KUCHING (June 11): Political activist Voon Shiak Ni has urged the Sarawak government to consider deploying mobile Covid-19 vaccination units to rural areas to accelerate the inoculation process.
She said these mobile vaccination units would, to a great extent, boost the inoculation rate in light of the logistics issue in Sarawak.
“Connectivity and transportation are among the common problems in rural areas. There are people not being able to show up for their vaccination appointment due to transportation issue.
“This is because most young people are not at home with the elderly back in the rural areas due to the movement restrictions,” she said in a statement today.
Voon observed that some elderly folk had not registered for vaccination because their children were not by their side.
As such, she said mobile vaccination units would do great service to the rural community especially those villages or longhouses that are far from town.
According to her, mobile vaccination services have been launched in Peninsular Malaysia following an approval from the prime minister.
“Putrajaya has approved the ‘hybrid approach’ which allows people to be vaccinated first before registration is done through MySejahtera. This approach is more practical especially in rural areas.”
Voon said the chief minister seemed to be in favour of the ‘hybrid approach’ to expedite the vaccination process.
She added that the State Disaster Management Committee (SDMC), however, had not given its nod to the approach.
“We are racing with time to prevent more people from being infected. Simpler and speedier measures are what we need.”
She asserted that lockdown would not be helping much in curbing the pandemic, which seemed not improving.
She also queried the government for how long it could lock down the country.
“Do we need to continue locking down the country for one month, two months or three months? We all cannot be sure.
“I do humbly request the SDMC to look into the possibilities of implementing mobile vaccination services if the state aims to vaccinate about 70 per cent of Sarawakians by August,” added Voon.