By Ling Hui
KUCHING, Jan 30: State Disaster Management Committee (SDMC)’s action to have daily updates on locations visited by Covid-19 cases is wise to stop rumours or fake news, says Sibu Municipal Council (SMC) chairman Clarence Ting.
Now that the information is transparent and available to the public, he said, people can act upon it as well without relying solely on the government in containing the spread of the virus.
“In March or April when the pandemic started, there were a lot of rumours alleging specific areas having Covid-19 cases. At that time, the actual locations were not disclosed so it created fright among the people.
“Now that the locations are published every day, it is good as there is now more transparency in SDMC’s efforts,” he added.
With this, he opined that options are now available to the people and proper procedures can be taken for their own safety, whether or not to visit exposed places unnecessarily or wear proper gears before going anywhere.
Of the same mind, Miri City Council (MCC) mayor Adam Yii Siew Sang said knowing the list of locations could be beneficial to businesses as well.
“There are asymptomatic cases out there without any symptoms and people are unaware of the danger.
“So, if investigations found some premises to be on the list and the owners could close down for one or two days to perform sanitisation, it would be good for them too,” he said.
Adding on, he revealed that most of the Mirians acknowledge and agree with SDMC’s decision for this publication.
Both Ting and Yii were in a Facebook live streaming session by Kuching South City Council (MBKS) mayor Dato Wee Hong Seng earlier today.
They were voicing their comments on the issue when Wee said a previous poll on his Facebook showed that 97.25 per cent of over 6,000 voters agreed to the idea of revealing locations exposed to Covid-19 and the other 2.75 per cent disagreed. — DayakDaily
