George Young Si Ricord Jr
KUCHING (April 14): Habitat for Indigenous and Urban Programme (Hidup) has urged the government to conduct mass Covid-19 screening on all Sarawak residents.
Its president George Young Si Ricord Jr said that with the health and medical personnel from Peninsular Malaysia being despatched to the state to help combat the virus, they can be tasked to carry out the mass screening.
“Do it zone by zone, lock down the zones that are yet to be screened,” he said in a statement.
He pointed out that having lockdowns and high fines for Covid-19 standard operating procedure (SOP) violations are not going to solve the problem, as the root cause is “the hundreds and possibly thousands of asymptomatic people who are freely moving about in Sarawak, spreading the virus”.
Therefore, he said the only effective way to cut the chain of transmission is to identify and take these asymptomatic people off the streets and seal all entry points to Sarawak.
He said this was in light of the new high record of Covid-19 cases in the state and country yesterday, with 607 cases.
At the same time, he said the decision by the Ministry of Education, Health Ministry and state government to reopen schools has proven to be disastrous, adding that so many schools, both secondary and primary, have experienced shut down after they reopened.
“The vaccination of teachers is still very much in the early stage and the vast majority of teachers have not been vaccinated. To compound the problem, children of age 16 years old and below are not to be vaccinated.
“In short, the schools in Sarawak are no where near the safe zone. Why did the government decided to reopen schools?”
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