KUCHING: The police are prepared to face the coming Sarawak state election, said Datuk Aidi Ismail.
The Sarawak Police Commissioner said they had been preparing since last year as per the guidelines issued by the Election Commission (EC) regarding polls during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We have identified the vehicles and machinery needed as well as arranged the logistics. We have also identified members for training, and the training exercise has been underway since last year.
“Training included cases involving election offences and crowd control during polling,” he said today.
He added that the EC guidelines included restriction on campaigning in groups.
“The number of polling stations will also be increased to reduce the number of people in a crowd and each polling station, including the registration centre, will have at least one police officer.”
Aidi also mentioned that all district police headquarters (IPD) were ready and had identified the number of constituencies involved in each district.
However, he said the strict requirements to enter Sarawak, including the compulsory 14-day quarantine, would make it difficult to arrange for manpower from Peninsular Malaysia.
“Therefore, we will use what we have (manpower) here, including from IPDs, General Operations Force and Police Training Centre.
“We also need to have a district control centre (DCC) to ensure everything runs smoothly. The DCC will communicate with the Contingent Control Centre (CCC) which will report directly to the MCC (Malaysia Control Centre) in Bukit Aman so that whatever happens on the ground is known by Bukit Aman.”
Additionally, he mentioned that they were also facing a shortage in terms of off-road vehicles to transport personnel to polling stations in rural areas.
“For this, we have decided to rent vehicles, especially for off-road use because we need to station our personnel in rural areas.
“We have asked for an allocation of RM3 million to cover the estimated expenditure.”
