Chua
KOTA KINABALU: The Sabah Housing and Real Estate Developers Association (Shareda) has urged the government to implement the Construction Industry Vaccination Programme (CIVac) in Sabah, as opposed to expanding the programme to Sabah only upon demand.
Its president, Datuk Chua Soon Ping, said Shareda and Sabah Builders Association could facilitate CIVac by registering the companies and workers that wanted to sign up for the vaccination programme.
“We can create demand in Sabah.
“But the government has to let us know when we can receive the vaccines as we do not want to wait indefinitely,” he said on Monday.
Chua hoped that both local and foreign workers in the construction sector could complete their vaccination as soon as possible to prevent shutting down worksites over and over again for Covid-19 screenings.
“The ultimate solution for Covid-19 is vaccination.”
CIVac, a joint effort between the Works Ministry through the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB), will see contractors, developers, consultants, concessionaires, suppliers, workers, supervisors, project managers and administrative personnel receive their vaccinations at selected locations.
The first phase of registration for CIVac was opened for 40,000 construction workers in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor on June 21.
Works Minister Datuk Seri Fadillah Yusof said based on the positive response, the second phase of CIVac would be opened in Penang, Johor and Pahang, as well as expanded to Sabah and Sarawak upon demand.
On another note, Chua reiterated his call for the government to allocate more Covid-19 vaccines to Sabah.
He said the allocation of Covid-19 vaccines in Sabah should be based on the size of population, rather than vaccine registration.
He said vaccine registration in Sabah only stood at around 30 per cent, while the inoculation rate for the first dose was less than 10 per cent, which was much lower than other states like Kuala Lumpur and Sarawak that have exceeded 60 per cent and 40 per cent vaccination rate respectively.
He said many rural folks were unable to register for vaccination via the MySejahtera application as they did not own a smartphone.
Chua urged the government to allocate more vaccines to Sabah starting next month to speed up the vaccination programme here, or else Sabah would be lagging behind other states in Malaysia.
He pointed out that the slow vaccination rate would also dampen economic recovery.
“China was the fastest in recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic because of its speedy vaccination rate.
“It shows that the inoculation rate affects the pace of economic recovery.”
Hence, he hoped that the Federal Government would distribute more vaccines to Sabah to speed up the vaccination progress.