Kit Siang calls for immediate setting up of food banks nationwide

KUCHING: Putrajaya has been urged to immediately set up food banks across the country to help the vulnerable groups affected by the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns.

In making this call yesterday, Iskandar Puteri MP Lim Kit Siang said the government should draw up a new strategy and approach to replace its present strategy which has failed thus far.

“This is why the reconvening of Parliament and the State Legislative Assemblies are important. There are medical experts who believe that the Covid-19 cases announced daily were a serious undercount of the actual Covid19 cases because of the serious undertesting in Malaysia.

“This is because we are only doing a third the daily minimum of 200,000 to 300,000 tests a day. There is also the high positivity rate,” he said in a statement yesterday.

Malaysia recorded a new high of 9,180 new Covid-19 cases Thursday and yesterday’s the cases surged past that figure with new 9353 recorded. The last time the country surpassed the 9,000-mark of daily cases was on May 29 with 9,020 cases.

Lim, who is Democratic Action Party veteran lawmaker, said the country had overtaken Japan two weeks before the opening of the Tokyo Olympics to be ranked Number 33 among nations in the world with the most cumulative total of Covid-19 cases.

“By the present rate of Covid-19 infections, by the middle of the month, Malaysia will go another step down the slippery slope of a worst-performing nation in the Covid-19 pandemic and overtake Israel to be ranked Number 32.

“We are likely to break the 900,000mark before the 20th of the month and might break the million mark at the end of the month – a month before we celebrate our 58th anniversary of the Merdeka Day,” he pointed out.

He said Malaysia fell over 50 rankings in the last eight months from its 85th position in November last year among the nations in the world with the most cumulative total of Covid-19 cases to now 33rd ranking. He feared that by August 31, the country would fall below the 30th ranking.

“Before the Emergency was declared on Jan 11 to combat the pandemic, there were 551 deaths. But the deaths for the first nine days this month

– 653 deaths – is more than the deaths recorded in the first 12 months of the Covd-19 pandemic. What type of an Emergency is this?” added Lim.