Developing countries often have hypertrophied bureaucracies, requiring businesses to deal with enormous amounts of red tape.
– James Surowiecki, American Journalist
Last Friday I wrote in my column about the danger of being too coronavirus-centric that we have forgotten we have to watch out for other types of disease that afflict our country.
I mentioned that last year Malaysia had an all-time record of 119,198 cases of dengue fever which caused 162 deaths.
That means an average of 359 cases every day and something had to be done lest we are distracted.
So I wasn’t surprised when Bandar Kuching MP Dr Kelvin Yii, a Covid-19 patient himself, told the New Sarawak Tribune about the dramatic rise of dengue fever in Kuching which had 68 cases within the first two months of the year.
He wrote in his Facebook post: “The national mortality or death rate from dengue alone was 162 deaths a year.”
And then to confirm my earlier prognosis, University Kebangsaan Malaysia public health specialist Prof Dr Rozita Hod reported there were 58 fatalities in Malaysia in the first four months of the year — 21 short of national Covid-19 fatality figure of 89.
In fact in the first three months of 2020 there were 35,847 cases in Malaysia.
In some of my latest Facebook postings together with photographs, I noted from a Garden City Kuching is fast becoming a jungle with overgrown bushes and untrimmed and unruly flower beds.
For the past weeks I haven’t seen any council workers except for a few of the staff, especially the road sweepers, working.
Even though there is a prohibition of more than one person in a vehicle, the contractors need not use one van to ferry six or seven workers to a location; instead they can send one or two workers with their bush cutters on motorcycles at one time.
At least they will be far apart when cutting the grass or picking up the rubbish and clearing the long lallang where empty containers with water lay hidden.
Dr Yii said that the onus was on councils to carry out systematic grass cutting.
He pointed out that the federal government had allowed and approved grass cutting during the MCO period.
There was no need to follow everything to the book and forsake other equal responsibilities.
Said Dr Yii: “In Sarawak we have our own local council ordinance thus giving us autonomy to decide whether to follow the directive or not.”
Interestingly, he said that the long grass could be the hiding places for snakes and monitor lizards which could invade homes and endanger the
occupants.
He failed to realise that snakes and monitors would probably be welcomed into some homes because they would instead become “food” for unemployed contract workers, who have been stuck in the city for six weeks.
On another zoonotic disease I wrote about is leptospirosis — the rat-urine disease that is carried by infected rats.
Millions of rats, living in a maze of tunnels under these open air markets, are now having the time of their lives because there are no cats or hungry strays to cope with.
I noticed that some homes which do not have standard Trienekens dustbins, just leave their rubbish in plastic bags on the ground.
Of course within 24 hours hungry dogs, cats or rats would eventually tear through the plastic bags.
In fact leptospirosis is an emerging problem in the country.
Last week I said that in 2015 Sarawak had the second highest number of cases of leptospirosis in the country.
Now that the open air markets are empty, where are the council’s fogging teams responsible for flushing out the rodents?
In the past the council used to fog the open air night sea food markets after the guests had left.
For the places that were not fogged, rats as big as cats would come out to play — some are even able to climb up the slippery Trienekens bins.
Having said this, I may not be the most popular reporter in town.
But not to worry because there is still time for the authority to made amends.
After all we may have to stay in “lockdown” for the next three weeks before the fourth quarter of the MCO ends in mid-May.
Keep your fingers crossed!
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the New Sarawak Tribune.
