Almost a month ago, on the 1st of January, Malaysia started what is considered a third attempt on the Movement Control Order, known as the FMCO or MCO 3.0 by the people. However, since then, not only has the daily covid cases not visibly reduce, but the amount of clusters in factories have gone up, bringing us to almost 100 Covid-19 clusters!
The MCO has since been extended twice including the latest announcement and people are getting frustrated. One of them is former prime minister Najib Razak, who has been constantly sharing his thoughts and opinions on social media, particularly Facebook, throughout the pandemic.
In one of his latest posts, he urged the government to stop repeating the same mistakes and take this opportunity to carry out an actual full lockdown for the next 14 days. This includes closing down all economic activities such as factories to obtain the best result at curbing the virus.
During the announcement of the MCO, the government declared that only particularly important industries were allowed to operate, only to turn around and give permissions to tens of thousands of factories and offices to continue running. This has been reducing the impact of all previous measures to combat the virus, and an issue to those who actually did follow the SOPs and stayed at home.
Najib Razak further elaborated about the number of people who have lost their lives and many more who have suffered while our country has been bleeding in billions of Ringgit for nothing, just because of the government's repeated mistakes. He further stated that closing down factories would not cause them to go belly up and that if we properly implemented the lockdown, the people would get a much needed breather.
"Many haven't seen their family members for a long time. The government implementing a 'total lockdown' that is not 'total' loosely. Is there any sympathy for the citizens who have sacrificed? Even worse, some are being financially and mentally stressed, eventually choosing to end their own lives. Until when are we going to be like that?" These are just parts of what he has posted.
As expected, the rakyat whole-heartedly agree with his statements, with many people urging the government to commit to a full lockdown by posting and reposting their voices on the social media sites of our current prime minister, defense minister, and government pages. The phrase #TutupKilang has also been trending on various social media.
So, what do you think? Is an actual full lockdown needed? Is it even a viable choice knowing the state of our economy? What can the government do from here? All we know is that as citizens, we can only do our part in preventing the spread of the virus. The rest is up to them.
