Foo
KOTA KINABALU: Small and Medium Enterprise Association of Sabah (SME Sabah) founding president, N.K. Foo agreed with the call by Sabah Economic Advisory Council (SEAC) chairman Tan Sri David Chu for all sectors to be opened without delays.
Based on a recent survey conducted by the Ministry of Entrepreneur Development and Cooperatives (MEDAC) involving 6,664 entrepreneurs, he said one-third did not receive the various forms of aids, 60 per cent of them were suffering from at least one form of mental health condition during the lockdown due to a decline or loss of income, debt or financing issues and risk of closure of business and 90 per cent had no insurance.
He said MEDAC minister Datuk Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar in a press report sounded the alarm warning that the Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector could collapse by October 2021 if the lockdown were to prolong. The minister also said that 580,000 businesses or 49 per cent of the MSME sector will be expected to collapse if they are not allowed to resume their business by October this year.
With these business closures, MEDAC estimated that more than seven million Malaysians will become unemployed.
Wan Junaidi added that once closed these businesses will not be around to help rebuild the economy when allowed to reopen later.
Foo said it is critical for the government to act now in saving livelihoods with a more dynamic and effective sets of standard operating procedures (SOPs) to cover all economic sectors and not just the essential economic sectors.
“Due to the protracted uncertainties of when the Covid-19 pandemic can be put under control, relief aids like the wage subsidies, moratorium or repayment assistance and others will not be enough for MSME to survive.”
As long as the risks of escalating the Daily Active Cases (DAC) are manageable, Foo said the government should now be actively looking into allowing all such economic sectors in Sabah to be opened.
“For example, a family store operating a retail shop should be allowed to open although not selling essential items as defined by the current SOPs.
“Their operations are similar to a retail pharmacy where customers are met at their shop front and their orders taken.
“Not more than two shop assistants can be in the shop to fill orders from customers waiting at the shop front.
“Imagine the daily cash flows that these family shops will be able to get which can help their shop stay open,” he said.
After 18 months since the first Movement Control Order (MCO) in March 2020 and a number of MCOs relaxing and tightening SOPs, Foo said businesses have been greatly impacted with a massive loss of business revenues.
“There is no official tracking of the number of business that had folded and/or the number of business with limited cash reserves to continue their operations as compared to the various reports and analysis of the DAC.”
Without bearing in mind these livelihood indicators when considering the revision of the SOP which is based solely on the DAC, he said any decisions by the government will be at best a lopsided policy skewing towards saving lives and not livelihoods.
While the Federal Government have good reasons to impose stricter SOP due to the high DAC in a number of West Malaysian states; however, for States like Sabah, where over the past few months the DAC have been well controlled between 200 to 500 daily active cases, a more relaxed set of SOPs should be allowed, he said.
Fortunately, Foo said the Sabah government did adopt a more relaxed set of SOPs which include allowing dine-ins and non-contact sports.
“The Sabah government is to be complemented for this brave move and the successful strategies in nipping the problem in its bud by imposing target enhanced MCO (EMCO) in areas detected with high DAC.
“This is a better approach to balance lives with livelihoods. Over the past few months Sabah’s DAC are still under control.”
By allowing more economic sectors, such as the family stores, to open where the risks of escalating the DAC are manageable, he said more SMEs will be given a chance to gather some sales revenue or valuable cash flows to help partially pay wages, loans and other operating expenses.
In doing so, he said SMEs are also helping government to save jobs and reduce unemployment in addition to making statutory contributions like Employees Provident Fund (EPF), Employment Insurance System (EIS), Social Security Organization (SOCSO) and Human Resource Development Fund (HRDF) to the government.
Foo pointed out that one of the three main objectives of Pemerkasa Plus of “supporting the continuity of businesses” will be better achieved by allowing more economic sectors to open.
“With more economic sectors opening there will be increased movements, and therefore monitoring and enforcement of the strict compliance of SOP is critical.
“To assist the enforcement personnel a few hotline numbers are to be added to the MySejahtera app for the public’s reference and use to send in photos to report any violation of SOP that they come across to the enforcement authorities.
“In this way swift actions by the enforcement officials can be taken on those violators to help control the spread of the Covid-19 virus and deter others from breaching the SOP.”
Food said testing should also be stepped up in a well-planned manner.
He said testing facilities are to be enhanced to allow more samples to be tested each day locally.
Early detection and isolation of active cases by getting the test results quickly is critical in minimising the spread of the Covid-19 virus in the community, he added.
“The above measures to control the spread of Covid-19 virus together with the current speeded up vaccination programmes towards achieving herd immunity and with opening up of more economic sectors will be a much better approach to balance saving lives and livelihoods.
“Therefore, we urge the government to urgently look into the proposals by SEAC chairman Tan Sri David to open up all sectors of economy and allow those fully vaccinated persons more freedom of movement to help in the economic recovery.”