Vaccine registration: Village heads in Dong do their part with home visits

KUANTAN: Walking from house to house and checking their WhatsApp application every hour has become a routine for the Penghulu and eight village chiefs of Mukim Dong in Raub District of late.

They are in fact keeping tabs to ensure residents under their care are signed up for the Covid-19 vaccine programme.

Since the middle of last month, the local leaders, together with government officers, have braved the hot weather to meet as many residents as they can, to ask if they have registered as vaccine recipients, and if they haven’t, would then assist them to sign up.

However Dong Penghulu Muhd Nor Baharum, 40, said this routine had to be stopped due to the enforcement of Movement Control Order 3.0 (MCO 3.0), and now they turn to social media besides WhatsApp to continue the effort.

“I uploaded an announcement on several social media platforms on our efforts to register Dong residents for vaccination last Thursday, which was attached with links to WhatsApp numbers of eight village heads in the sub-district.

“Surprisingly, after the announcement was made, we received many applications, not only from those living in Dong, but also from young people working out of the district who asked for their parents to be registered as well,” he said, when contacted by Bernama, here, today.

Muhd Nor said in two days, they received over 80 applications through WhatsApp and the village heads helped to fill in the forms provided by using the information given, to be registered on Pahang’s Covid-19 Immunisation System (SICP) website.

He said the initiative to open registration by survey and WhatsApp helped them register over 1,500 names out of 2,157 targeted so far.

“We do this voluntarily to help the state government sign up as many Pahang eligible residents as possible. However it cannot be denied that it felt good to be thanked by those we helped,” he said.

For Kampung Pasir Bayam head Abdul Ghani Nordin, 58, manual registration from house to house really works, because he could check as to who had not signed up and their reason for not doing so.

Many cited not having smartphones or Internet, with the majority of them also unaware of the importance of being vaccinated.

“As of now, praise to Allah, nobody has been influenced by fake stories on social media about the vaccines, they just did not have the means to register and they thanked our efforts in facilitating the matter,” he said.

As for Kampung Lechar head, Ishak Ibrahim, 52, he described the act of conducting the vaccine survey as his duty in ensuring the safety of residents entrusted in his care.

“Besides that, we also understand when residents dare not open their doors to strangers, at least when they see me, they know that it is safe to do so,” he said. — Bernama