KUCHING: Those who have trouble registering for Covid-19 vaccination due to not having a telephone can use the number of their respective district offices.
Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah said the state government had discussed with Coordinating Minister for National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme Khairy Jamaluddin on some cases of eligible recipients not having a mobile phone for contact and notification purposes.
Such cases, he noted, were common as most people residing in the rural areas or the interior do not own handphones.
“District offices reported that some of the manual registrations have names and addresses but they do not have telephone numbers.
“If we follow the system, the application of such particular recipient would be rejected because of incomplete data.
“Therefore, YB Khairy has agreed with the proposal made by Sarawak whereby those with no telephone numbers would use the telephone numbers of the district offices instead,” he said at a press conference today.
With district offices filling in the gap for ‘telephone number’ section in MySejahtera app registration, the State Health Department (JKNS) has also agreed to assist in forwarding the MySejahtera list to Residents and district officers.
From here, the district offices would shoulder another responsibility whereby they would have to get in contact with the recipients on the ground especially those in rural areas to notify them on their scheduled appointments for vaccine shots.
Uggah who is also the Sarawak Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) chairman revealed that for the second phase of Covid-19 immunisation programme, Sarawak only recorded a total of 266,197 registrations or 28.64 percent to date.
“According to our estimates, the total number eligible recipients for the second phase vaccination is 929,435. However, we only recorded 28.64 percent so far.
“Therefore, we would like to urge members of the public to come forward and register for the vaccination.
“We also urge the family members of the eligible recipients to play their role and help in the registration because we understood that 80-year-olds may not have a cellphone and thus, have no access to MySejahtera app,” he said.
Uggah also mentioned that the state government will intensify efforts to speed up registration process by reaching out to the people.
“We will utilise all the government machineries to reach out to the people because this is the opportunity for us to find one sure way to fight Covid-19 in Sarawak. The state government is doing all it can to make sure that this immunisation programme will be implemented as seamless as possible,” he added.
