Minister of International Trade and Industry, Datuk Seri Azmin Ali said employees working with companies that are allowed to operate during the Movement Control Order (MCO) must undergo Covid-19 screening. He said MITI would collaborate with the Human Resources Ministry to ensure that all the employees were free from the Covid-19 virus.
“Employers applying to operate must ensure that all their workers undergo screening at any of the 3,000 over SOCSO panel health clinics nationwide according to guidelines by the Ministry of Health. “The ministry has also made it mandatory for companies that have been allowed to operate to submit the registers of workers that are involved in their operations during the MCO. “The companies must also ensure that their movement is confined only to leaving their homes to the factories or premises,” he told a media conference in Putrajaya.
Datuk Seri Azmin added that the companies are also required to provide thermal scanners as well as screening for symptoms of coughing, sore throat or breathing difficulties. “The readings of the workers must be recorded and kept for a period of at least three months for reference,” he said. He also said that the Works Ministry and the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) have also come up with several conditions that must be adhered to by the construction industry. All construction companies, he said, must reduce the number of workers to the bare minimum or not exceeding 50 per cent of what is currently needed. Aside from that, the companies must fully cooperate with the Health Ministry in executing contact tracing of workers that have been infected with Covid-19. Construction companies must also provide transportation for workers, practise social distancing and sanitise all vehicles used by them, he said.
Commenting on the move, the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers (FMM) urged SOCSO to ensure the smooth process of conducting mass Covid-19 screening for workers. FMM president Tan Sri Soh Thian Lai said the panel clinics under SOCSOmust be well-equipped to screen to employees, who will be given clearance to work in selected sectors during the next phase of the MCO. He said it remained unclear at this point if the clinics on the SOCSO panel were ready with the Covid-19 test kits and what their daily test capacity was. “In addition, there are concerns on whether we have enough laboratories to analyse the samples coming from the 3,000 SOCSO panel clinics and provide the results within 24 hours of the swab test,” he said.
He suggested that the government allowed the screening to be done at the workplace instead of at the clinics due to the MCO.“
