PETALING JAYA: The compliance rate for the Movement Control Order (MCO), as of yesterday stood at 97%.
This means, 3%, which is still a sizable amount of the population, is still defying the MCO.
In light of this, DAP advisor Lim Kit Siang (pix) has called for an emergency Parliament meeting to get lawmakers to convey the message on the importance of social distancing and obeying the MCO.
“It is important and imperative that there should be a greater effort to explain the rationale of social distancing to all Malaysians as the success of the social distancing measure will depend on the degree of national unity and support for the social distancing measure,“ said Lim in a statement today.
“This is where an emergency meeting of Parliament on Covid 19 will be useful, not only in approving the stimulus package announced by the Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, on Friday but to demonstrate full support and solidarity of all Malaysians transcending race, religion, region or politics for the spate of anti-Covid-19 measures, including social distancing.
“The energies and efforts of all Malaysian elected representatives, regardless of party politics, must be harnessed to win the invisible war against Covid-19 and to restart the economic engine of Malaysia in the shortest possible time.”
Lim also commended Health Ministry Director-General Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah, who had earlier in the week said: “We must be prepared for the worst, and hope for the best.”
The Iskandar Putri MP cautioned that a vaccine would take anywhere between a year and 18 months to be created and that there could be a need for MCO to be extended.
“Social distancing is the only measure to slow the exponential spread of Covid-19 as well as to deal with the dire shortage of supplies and diagnostic capacity of the health care system to deal with surges of Covid-19 cases. Malaysians must be prepared for the worst but hope and unite for the best,“ added Lim.
“Let us prove wrong the worst prognosis of global investment bank JP Morgan that Covid-19 would peak at 6,300 cases in mid-April or that of the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research (MIER) that Covid-19 would peak at 8,900 cases.”
