KOTA KINABALU: Sabah Housing and Real Estate Developers Association (SHAREDA) is urging the government to get more doses of vaccines and speed up vaccination in the State.
“According to the data from the Special Committee for the Guaranteed Access to the Covid-19 Vaccine Supply (JKJAV), Sabah has the lowest vaccinated population, at only 9.9 percent of the population has received their first dose as of yesterday,” SHAREDA President, Datuk Chua Soon Ping said.
He said that neigbouring state Sarawak has already achieved 40.9 percent as of yesterday.
“I am concerned by the slow vaccination rate in Sabah since this will have an adverse impact on the economy recovery progress for Sabah,” he said in a statement.
He also said that the government has to increase the delivery of vaccine to Sabah and allocate resources to speed up the vaccination progress .
“The low vaccination rate leaves Sabah vulnerable to another wave of infection.
“It is even more crucial now as Sabah has just reported two cases of Delta Variant yesterday. Sabah may have the least MySejahtera vaccine registration, but that should not mean we should receive the lowest distribution of vaccine doses. Many NGOs and religious organisations have in fact successfully registered their members to receive vaccine, and most have been waiting for months,” he said.
And in view of the recent confusion caused by varying SOP announcement between the state and the federal government, SHAREDA feels that the state should be given the right to decide on its own SOP in response to the situation locally.
“Sabah should be able to decide its own SOPs so we can implement measures to effectively address the problems faced locally, and in a timely manner. The situation and problems facing Sabah is very different to those in the Peninsular, so it would not be effective fo Sabah to follow the same SOP as the Peninsular.”
“Time is of the essence and the government must act and respond quickly to the fast evolving situation to avoid outbreak or economy meltdown,” said Chua.
