KUCHING: The state government’s aim to vaccinate the population including legal and illegal foreign workers is a good strategy to achieve herd immunity quickly and to save Sarawak from having to lock down its cities and towns again, said Datuk Sim Kiang Chiok.
As for who should bear the cost of vaccination for these foreign workers, the Sarawak Housing and Real Estate Developers’ Association (Sheda) Kuching branch chairman expressed his view that most employers would welcome free vaccinations for all legal and illegal foreign workers.
“This is more of a medical rather than monetary consideration so that more can be vaccinated in the quickest time,” he said in a statement today.
He said the consideration to let employers pay for the vaccination would impose more hardship on small and medium companies and would involve more cost of doing business in these poor economic times.
“These employers have already borne some cost for Covid-19 tests before they resumed work from the initial lockdown. All these costs will be passed on to their prices, which will eventually affect the end users.
“It would be better to stick to the plan as announced by the federal and state governments that all vaccinations are provided free for all so that we can achieve herd immunity in the shortest time possible,” he said.
“Whatever increased cost will reduce profit and tax for our government. Reducing their cost will increase their profit and tax collection. So these vaccination costs can still be recovered from the tax these companies will eventually pay to the government,” said Sim.
He said the vaccination plan as announced by the federal government was akin to a light at the end of a long tunnel, and hoped that the vaccination plan could be carried out as planned so that herd immunity could be achieved to reduce the threat of Covid-19 infections.
“Our Sarawak government has also announced that they would try to achieve herd immunity in the quickest possible time. Our federal government’s timeline is to achieve their vaccination plan by February next year while our Sarawak government is setting a target for August this year.
“We are ever grateful that we can be protected and move on in our lives back to the old normal,” he said.
He said the quicker herd immunity was achieved, the better it would be in terms of protecting lives and also resuming the economy to its more productive pre Covid-19 times.
“The vaccine will also reduce the strain on our national healthcare caused by this pandemic,” he said.
Sim said despite being vaccinated, people would only be safe once herd immunity was achieved.
“Until then, we have to stick to the standard operating procedure (SOP) of washing hands, wearing face masks, and keeping up social distancing,” he said.
Earlier, Local Government and Housing Minister Datuk Seri Dr Sim Kui Hian disclosed that the state government wanted to vaccinate all foreign workers in Sarawak including illegal ones.
