Extended MCO: SMEs just have to ‘grin and bear it’ — Association

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Those in the small-medium enterprise (SME) sector would just have to bear with the extension of the Movement Control Order (MCO) period for another two weeks.

KUCHING (June 13): Those in the small-medium enterprise (SME) sector would just have to bear with the extension of the Movement Control Order (MCO) period for another two weeks, beginning this Tuesday, in view of public health, safety and well-being being the priority now amidst the Covid-19 pandemic.

In stating this, SME Association of Sarawak president Dato Seri Charles Voon said despite many SME players going to be hurt by the extension, it would ‘be better to experience a short-term pain than a long-term suffering’.

“We understand the rationale behind the government’s decision of extending the MCO period, in view of the alarming number of daily Covid-19 cases reported in Sarawak.

“But this MCO is not as bad as the full MCO (FMCO), which was enforced in March last year, because this time, some SMEs can still run their operations, although not at full capacity,” he said in a statement yesterday.

Voon said like any individual Sarawakians, the SMEs must work together with everyone to contain the spread of the virus and also to make sure that a full MCO would not be enforced.

He believed that the most important thing now would be for the Covid-19 vaccination programme to be run at a faster pace.

In this respect, he expressed his hope that the government could meet the ‘herd immunity’ target – namely to have at least 70 per cent of the whole population in Sarawak vaccinated – within the next two months.

“I think if we could vaccinate 70 to 80 per cent of our population sooner, we could slowly start with from where we left off and work towards reviving our economy by resuming all our business operations, and that the people could return to work while still in compliance with the SOP (standard operating procedures).

“Perhaps after that, we could come back and talk about our economy,” he added.

Voon also commended the government’s initiative of opening up more vaccination centres (PPVs) in to accelerate the vaccination programme.

“I hope more mobile outreach teams would be formed and despatched to the rural, interior areas across Sarawak, where the people living in remote villages and longhouses there could get vaccinated.

“We welcome the Chief Minister’s initiative of allowing those in the rural areas to obtain vaccination via walk-ins, rather than waiting for their appointments via MySejahtera because many of them may not be contactable for immediate or short appointment notices.

“In this respect, we also hope that the urban population too would be allowed to have walk-in vaccination at the PPVs, as long as they have registered via MySejahtera.

“Many other countries allow their citizens to undergo walk-in vaccination which, I think, would help expedite the whole process both in the urban and the rural areas.”

Voon also called upon all SMEs in Sarawak to encourage their employees to register for Covid-19 vaccination and to that extent, convince their family members to do the same.