KUCHING, July 1: Sarawak Democratic Action Party (DAP) chairman Chong Chieng Jen urges the State government to formulate more practical and workable standard operating procedures (SOPs) for the people and businesses under Phase One of the National Recovery Plan.
He asserted that the existing SOPs were ineffective in reducing the number of Covid-19 cases as well as illogical and confusing, thus causing unnecessary hardship to the people and businesses.
“Among sectors most affected by the current SOPs are the coffeeshops and small eateries because of the “no dine-in” SOPs. After more than one year of the pandemic, there was no cluster arising from coffeeshop dine-ins.
“On the contrary, there were numerous clusters from the large factories. Yet, the Movement Control Order (MCO) 3.0 SOPs implemented by the State government allows these factories to operate but disallow the coffeeshops and these eateries to provide dine-in services,” he said in a press statement today.
Chong added that there was also no known cluster from sporting activities yet gyms were ordered to close, and sports activities be it contact sports or non-contact sports except for jogging were disallowed.
Adding on, he said there were also no clusters formed in the furniture industry, sports equipment shops, hair salons, car wash centres, car accessory shops, attire shops, and reflexology and wellness centres, but their businesses were not allowed to operate entirely.
He also asserted the State government has not been doing much to help those businesses and left them to sustain their businesses on their own.
Chong opined that current SOPs are causing prolonged hardship and pain for everyone and that most of the essential service sectors allowed to operate have seen their sales drop tremendously.
Thus, he called on the State government to formulate more practical and workable SOPs for the people and the business community. — DayakDaily
