A Grab driver contacted me yesterday expressing his concern about the danger of Covid infection e-hailing drivers and delivery riders are exposed to daily. We have all seen photos of thousands of patients visiting the Covid-19 Assessment Centre (CAC) daily and if they choose e-hailing services to take them there, surely the Government ought to protect these industry players from catching the infection and infecting others.
3 urgent steps must be taken to protect an estimated 200,000 e-hailing drivers and delivery riders on the road daily:
- Vaccination : The Ministry of Transport and the COVID-19 Immunisation Task Force (CITF) must immediately vaccinate these drivers and delivery riders who are transporting thousands of people, food boxes and parcels from various locations daily. This is not exactly rocket science. I am surprised they are not treated as frontliners even though they are categorised as essential service providers in every Movement Control Order (MCO).
- Ventilation : The Ministry of Health should provide guidance and encouragement on ventilation for these e-hailing rides. This is crucial for those transporting thousands of customers to CAC centres across Malaysia. Again, this is not rocket science. Why wasn’t this done earlier?
- Integration : MySejahtera needs to embrace the open data concept by sharing its data with relevant industry players. The Government assures that personal information will only be used for the purpose of managing and mitigating Covid-19 outbreak. Here is a classic example on why this data should be shared : Currently when a person books a ride, the driver is not provided any information on the customer’s Covid-19 status until the customer hops into the car and scans the QR code (provided the Covid-19 status in MySejahtera is current and reflective of the customer’s health). The potential exposure and chain of infection is simply unimaginable yet can be avoided and must be avoided.
As such, I call upon these Ministers who can immediately fix this within their respective jurisdiction to act today and I will name each one lest no one in Putrajaya would act – Wee Ka Siong (APAD), Khairy Jamaluddin (PICK) and Adham Baba (MOH). Perhaps the Selangor State Government and other State Governments can and should beat their Federal counterpart to it in arranging for vaccination for these 200,000 e-hailing frontliners. It grieves me to see that many of the 11,000 Covid cases daily could have been prevented if only there was coordination, competency and care exercised by these Cabinet Ministers. Again, this isn’t rocket science.