Home Minister, Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainuddin has tasked his officers, the Police and other enforcement agencies to conduct field checks on all operating sectors across the nation on SOP compliance.
With cases showing no sign of abating, the government is pursuing a tough course of action on flaunters by hitting the grounds visiting factories, businesses and offices to ensure owners are keeping to guidelines permitted in the approval letters issued by Ministry of International Trade and Industries. According to him, this massive task will be coordinated between 21 ministries and various relevant agencies.
The Minister was quoted in the national media warning those in operation to be ready and if they are caught violating any of the rules, they will be arrested and will be facing maximum fines, there will be no compromise this time he said. This operation will be conducted more tactically, a full list of sectors permitted to operate has been obtained which will then be cross referenced with the Health Ministry to make comparisons on factories with Covid-19 cases. They will then be referred with Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry and the Company’s Commission of Malaysia whether these factories were really allowed to operate under the sectors listed.
Its the first time since MCO 1.0, that the Home Ministry has gone all Dirty Harry on businesses although there were cases of some factories flouting the SOP’s, however Senior Minister Dato’ Seri Azmin Ali recently gave a press statement that factories were not contributing to high Covid-19 cases.
We believe more education and a monitoring approach is needed to get these businesses to comply, the constant changes in daily SOP’s is already tough to keep up and now threatening to arrest and imposing harsh punishment would not bode well for employers supporting many livelihood.
Lets just hope, Hamzah and his team don’t exact punishment like Clint Eastwood in the popular 80’s blockbuster, where the protagonist shoots first and asks questions later.
