A much-needed RM52 bil Covid-19 relief plan for Parliament to pass – P Gunasegaram

‘A RM50 billion injection of aid by giving cash to the most needy sections of society and an RM2 billion immediate injection to help hospitals in the Klang Valley cope with large numbers of Covid-19 cases are probably the most urgent things to do now.

‘This will alleviate the needless suffering of large numbers of people in the current environment who have to literally beg for food by flying white flags and rely on volunteers and non-governmental organisation to help them while the government should be at the forefront of such efforts.

‘But how would the government raise that RM52 billion, you ask. It can be done through multipartisan efforts by political units to raise the debt ceiling. And this can be done by calling for an urgent meeting of Parliament. But first, let’s lay out the problems and solutions.’

Read here (The Vibes, July 13, 2021)

Families on the edge [Malaysia]: Issue 1 -- The immediate impact of the Movement Control Order period

‘In May 2020 UNICEF and UNFPA jointly commissioned the Families on the Edge study to explore the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on women and children in low income urban families in Malaysia. This report is the first in a series of reports under the Families on the Edge project and describes the immediate socio-economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis on a group of 500 families with children in Kuala Lumpur’s low-cost flats, as well as preliminary insights on the relevance, adequacy and accessibility of key COVID-19 mitigation policies and other critical social services for this particularly vulnerable group. Future reports are expected to monitor the extent to which these families recover and offer critical insights for the general public and policymakers as Malaysia aims to ‘build-back-better’

Read here (Unicef Malaysia, August 2020)

Download the 36-page report here (Unicef Malaysia, August 2020)

Covid-19: Getting our SOPs right - Amar Singh HSS and Lim Swee Im

This article discusses a number of issues on SOPs pertaining to Malaysia today:

• How can we best monitor our pandemic when our numbers are low?
• How ready are our testing capabilities for a second and subsequent waves?
• How good are our safe physical distancing measures?
• Optimising masks in Covid-19 prevention
• There is no way for the poor (B40) to comply with this ruling without a government mandated free programme
• Mask etiquette and our leaders

Read here (The Malay Mail, July 27, 2020)

RM250bil stimulus: Priorities in response to a three-faceted crisis

Commentary by Jeyakumar Devaraj

“The first aspect and the precipitating cause of this crisis is the Covid-19 pandemic that is sweeping the world. The pandemic is causing a massive overload on the medical services even in the richest countries in the world...

“The second aspect of the crisis is that many Malaysians in the B40 and M40 groups, especially daily rated workers and small business people have already run out of their meagre savings after 10 days of the Movement Control Order (MCO) and are already having difficulty in providing food for their families...

“The third aspect of the problem is that our small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) which employ about 65percent of our workforce are seriously under threat. The lockdown means that the vast majority of these SMEs have had no income since March 18.

“Given this bleak scenario, several measures have to be implemented quickly to address each aspect of the crisis. The capacity of our health care system to respond to the Covid 19 epidemic has to be bolstered, measures to ensure that the poorer 50% of our population have access to food and other basic necessities have to be rolled out and another set of measures to ensure that as many as possible of our SMEs are kept viable so that they can provide employment to the rakyat when we are able to restart the economy.”

Read here (Malaysiakini, March 29, 2020)