Hard for PM to decide on extending RMCO — Senator
SIBU: It will be a tough decision for the Prime Minister to make on whether to extend or not the Recovery Movement Control Order ( RMCO), taking in view the statement by the World Health Organisation (WHO) that the Covid-19 is predicted to be around for the next two years.
Stating this, Senator Robert Lau said the economy and daily living cannot be put on hold for such a long period.
“The best solution is to loosen the RMCO even further for areas where there are no or very limited transmission.
“Many people are suffering mentally and physically either directly or indirectly because of the Movement Control Order (MCO),” he said yesterday in reacting to Ministry of Health (MOH)’s proposal for RMCO to be extended.
On Aug 23, MOH recommended that the National Security Council (MKN) extend the RMCO beyond Aug 31 when it is scheduled to end.
Its minister Datuk Seri Dr Adham Baba said that the recommendation was following the WHO expecting the Covid-19 outbreak to last for at least two years.
He had said the two-year period was a long time and various efforts had been implemented by the government, including embracing new norms to enable people to understand the common need to address the spread of Covid-19.
To this, Lau acknowledged that the government had taken the correct measures to prevent the virus from being brought into the country.
The government, he said, still has to continue with this control on foreigners coming into or Malaysians returning to
Malaysia.
“At the same time, the government and in particular the MOH will need bigger budget to deal with this pandemic.
“This will include increasing budget for tracing, testing and quarantine. Budgets can be transferred from ministries that cannot utilise their budget due to the virus to the Health Ministry,” Lau suggested.
Meanwhile, political secretary to the chief minister Michael Tiang said he expected RMCO to be extended considering that the covid-19 outbreak was still very much a threat around the world, including Malaysia.
He said certain movement controls should be put in place if the vaccines that could effectively prevent the spread of the virus have not been released.
“We may feel complacent and safe now that the pandemic is seen to be very much under control in Malaysia but let us not forget that we have beaten the spread of the virus through a series of strict enforcement of movement controls as well as various standard operating procedures (SOPs) for all kinds of activities.
“Moreover, just a few days ago director-general of Health Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah revealed that a new strain of coronavirus which is 10 times more infectious than the previous one was detected in Malaysia,” he said.
In other words, he added, the battle against the virus is far from over.
As such, Tiang fully supports MOH’s recommendations to the Prime Minister to extend the RMCO, as “we all believe RMCO will continue to keep us safe before the virus can be cured by vaccines”.