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Minister of Health recklessly reduces the isolation period for ministers return from abroad

The Minister of Health, Adham Baba, issued a new order in the Government Gazette that cabinet ministers who return from any official visit abroad can be exempted from being restricted by the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases Act 1988 (Act 342), where they only need to be quarantined for three days instead of the original ten days.

The public is hardly convinced because its political considerations have overridden science. In the past, many cabinet ministers violated standard operating procedures (SOP). However, their misconduct was dismissed by the authorities although their actions had been exposed to the public. This time around, the Minister of Health directly modified the quarantine regulations through legislation, treating our law as a plaything.

Although our Minister of Health has raised some provisos along with the deregulation, which includes the relevant minister must strictly abide by the bubble itinerary and the Ministry of Health will determine whether to extend the quarantine period, it is still questionable whether this can ensure that those ministers are able to wear their mask all the time or the government officials around the minister are not asymptomatic carriers. If the Minister of Health believes that the bubble itinerary can eliminate the risk, then there is no difference between the three days of isolation or no isolation at all.

Since the 2020 Sabah State Election, the COVID-19 situation in our country has remained critical, with the number of active cases continuing to hit a new high. As the leader of our country’s public health sector, our Minister of Health should formulate stricter and manageable preventive measures instead of relaxing quarantine regulations. However, it seems that our government high officials have forgotten the lessons learned from the Sabah State Election. The Sabah State Election has proven that the spread of the virus caused by the two people can break out across the country due to the loose and slack SOP and quarantine regulations. Right now, these cabinet ministers, who are also members of Parliament, are allowed to cross districts and states to serve voters. Ministers who have only been quarantined for three days after returning from abroad have the possibilities to cause new clusters and trigger a new wave of infections.

A few days ago, the #KitaMintaLima (We Ask for Five) hashtag set off a new viral trend on the Internet, which proved that people in our country are extremely disappointed with the government's policy deviations. The government is getting more and more biased on the road of fighting the pandemic. Meanwhile, the people's praise of the government at the beginning has turned into disgust, which is largely due to the policy changes and double standards in the policy implementation. A lot of law-abiding citizens abide by the SOPs during the pandemic. They have not seen their family members for a long time to break the chain of infection. Our country’s economy is inevitably facing recession with the number of unemployed people nearly 800,000. Disappointedly, our government’s double standards let the fight against the COVID-19 see no end.

Article 8 of the Federal Constitution guarantees equal treatment of everyone under the law. However, the new order in the Government Gazette violates the spirit of the Federal Constitution. Such legal inequality is unfair to the frontline personnel who have been fighting for a year and all the law-abiding people across the country. The principle of equality is the foundation of the law, and it infringed the spirit of the rule of law to exempt oneself from being bound by ordinary laws through legislative means.

Campus Democracy, Student Autonomy 

UMANY




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