WHILE seeking to ensure its daily operations continue to run smoothly, Proton has adhered to the requirements of the Movement Control Order (MCO) in order to help break the Covid-19 chain of infection in Malaysia.
At the same time, the Company has also obtained approval from the relevant agencies for essential operations to be carried out by essential employees.
Employees’ safety main priority
“The health and safety of Proton’s employees is of utmost importance. With a staffing force of close to 10,000 people, monitoring the health status of everybody is a daily task requiring cooperation from all levels,” says Proton CEO Li Chunrong.
“During the MCO, the health status of every employee is monitored twice daily with plans in place to isolate and treat those suspected of being infected with the virus. This includes weekends and takes in to account where the staff are based during the MCO as well as their active work status.
“Prior to the MCO, all staff movement outside the company was limited from the beginning of February 2020. Furthermore, those who travelled were required to undergo a 14-day self-quarantine upon their return including being screened for the virus before and after the quarantine period.
“When the news of the Covid-19 virus made headlines, Proton put in to effect an action plan to mitigate against infection. We have been diligent in our efforts and even before the MCO was announced, we cancelled all overseas business travel and enforced work from home operations for a few departments with staff who were quarantined for possible infections.
“Our main priority is the health and safety of our staff and we are hopeful of emerging from this situation unscathed.”
Approval for essential operations
While adhering to the strict parameters of the MCO means all Proton facilities have been shut down from March 18, certain job functions within Proton still require to be performed onsite.
For instance, maintenance of Proton’s production facilities have to be kept going while a few service centres earmarked to service the fleet of Proton cars used by government agencies remain operational.
To ensure staff members do not go against the rules of the MCO, Proton obtained approvals to issue letters for specific people to perform limited company operation.
Operations for other areas within the company continue unabated. Individual departments are required to have daily meetings with department heads updating their team members on management decisions and apportioning work with daily deliverables. All of it is done via video conferencing ensuring all employees can meet remotely.
“While we are cognisant of the need to adhere to the MCO, Proton has obtained approval from the authorities for a small number of its staff to continue working at specific locations to perform essential services,” says the company.
“As for our other staff members, we have asked them to adapt their work practices to the MCO rules. Thanks to video conferencing and messaging technology, meetings and discussions can be held from anywhere with an Internet connection so we are hopeful of keeping disruptions to our business operations to a minimum level.”
Supporting fight against Covid-19
To support Malaysia’s frontliners in the fight against Covid-19, Proton recently loaned the Ministry of Health 50 units of the Proton X70.
The vehicles will be used to shuttle health workers to and from work as well as send them to any virus hotspots in the country requiring immediate attention.
“As a Malaysian car manufacturer and significant contributor to the local automotive industry, Proton sees it as a duty to assist the government in its battle against the spread of Covid-19,” said Li.
“The frontliners are especially in our thoughts and we felt that this was an area that we could offer assistance with very quickly. For now, this is the most direct assistance we can give but we are also looking at other avenues of support as well.”
