Recently, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Datuk Seri Takiyuddin Hassan and Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Adham Baba announced a classification of offences in three categories in which the compounds are now based on severity of the violation.[1] The lowest amount to be fined according to the classification is RM1,500.
Datuk Seri Takiyuddin further tried to ‘soften’ the blow to the people by saying that these compounds will be the last resort and enforcement officers would first give advice and warnings.[2]
Unfortunately, even with the reclassification of offences, several pertinent issues still remain and must be addressed by the government. First and foremost, they must justify the reason for increasing the fines for Category Three offences ‘that involve low transmission risk of the virus and would not lead to a wide-scale impact to the community’ – specifically not wearing masks and failure to record details on MySejahtera or on the log book before entering premise and.
The category of offence itself indicates that these are minor, almost inconsequential violations and yet the compound for it is higher than our minimum wage of RM1,200.[3] This is both unjust and unjustified especially when guidelines set for SOPs are vague, unclear and constantly changing. In fact, a bi-partisan petition has called for fines to be lowered to RM250 for first offence, but this is ignored by the government who refuses to answer to Parliament.[4]
In the issue of wearing masks for example, there are still no proper guidelines in place for when and where to wear a mask. Senior Minister (Security Cluster) Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob previously announced that the wearing of face masks is only compulsory in crowded public places[5] and yet a shopkeeper in Johor was still issued a fine inside her own shop when there were no customers present.[6]
Both the enforcement officers and the public should be given clear, precise and identical guidelines to avoid any confusion of rules and the misuse of power, given that not wearing masks seem to be one of the top SOP violations.[7] In comparison, Singapore[8] and Australia[9] have issued far more detailed guidelines on where wearing a mask is required and exempted even though they do not have a mask fine.
In the case of recording details when entering any premises, I had previously raised questions – which are yet to be answered by the government – on the efficacy of MySejahtera in contact tracing and curbing the spread of Covid-19. People should be alerted or contacted through the app to get tested and quarantined if they have been identified as a close contact or even casual contact, but they are not. It only makes sense to issue summons if non-compliance affects public health as a whole; which in the case of MySejahtera, it does not as clearly the data collected is not being used as it should be.
In light of this, the government should immediately withdraw and annul all summons related to contact details and MySejahtera until we actually start using this data for contact tracing and mass testing. Mass testing is still needed as we are still a long way from reaching the required 70% immunisation for herd immunity.
I call upon Minister Ismail Sabri and Takiyuddin Hassan to address this and bring justice to law enforcement when it comes to Covid-19 related offenses. Enforce for public health, not just to be punitive to the rakyat!