By Adrian Lim
KUCHING, May 9: National Union of Bank Employees (NUBE) general secretary J Solomon urges the Ministry of Human Resources (MoHR) to take the lead to crack down on errant employers who take the standard operating procedures (SOPs) for the prevention of Covid-19 lightly.
Solomon in a press statement said the ministry must do more to curb the transmission of Covid-19 among workplace clusters which was on the rise by intensifying its enforcement on the ground to check on errant employers flouting the SOPs for the prevention of Covid-19 in workplaces.
“Workplaces involving both local and foreign workers constitute the largest number of Covid-19 clusters in recent weeks.
“For instance, on Friday (May 7), 10 of the 19 clusters detected nationwide were workplaces.
“Such statistics have been the ‘new normal’ and yet there is hardly any news on the Labour Department cracking down on errant employers flouting SOPs to stem the tide,” he said.
Without enforcement action taken by MoHR, Solomon noted many errant employers in the plantations, manufacturing, retail and other sectors seem to have a free run in deciding how many of the SOPs needed to be enforced, even as more and more work places turn into Covid-19 clusters.
Solomon, who is also former Malaysian Trade Union Congress (MTUC) secretary general, thus called on Human Resources Minister Datuk Seri M Saravanan and MoHR to be accountable for the growing number of growing workplace clusters of Covid-19 recently.
He claimed that Saravanan seems to have thrown in the towel, merely giving feeble advice to employers to abide by the SOPs, with little or no emphasis at all in ensuring his officers carry out sustained and thorough checks at workplaces.
Hence, Solomon is disappointed and calls on MoHR to take immediate action by ensuring that all employers enforce the SOPs in order to curb the transmission of Covid-19 at workplaces. — DayakDaily
