THE Health Ministry has yet to decide on allowing preschools and nurseries to resume operations.

Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the ministry has received applications from companies to allow the preschools to operate to ease the burden of working parents.

“The Health Ministry is still looking into the applications,” he told the daily press conference today.

He said the ministry was also concerned with the way the children would be monitored at preschools, adding that hand, foot and mouth disease was common among children attending such centres.

“We haven’t made a decision but we are scrutinising it in detail,” he said.

The ministry is also considering new ways for preschools to operate as gathering children in a place could increase the chances of infections, he said.

Most preschools said they will wait until after the movement control order (MCO) ends on Tuesday to reopen, as too little time was given for them to resume operations under the conditional MCO.

The Malaysian Islamic Kindergarten Association told The Malaysian Insight recently that its members were not ready to operate as they needed more time to implement health precautions, such as social distancing involving small children and between children and teachers. – May 8, 2020.