SARAWAK has begun deploying mobile outreach vaccination teams to rural areas to ramp up its Covid-19 vaccination programme, including Kapit, Baram, Limbang and Lawas divisions.

Dozens of such teams have already been deployed to Kapit, Chief Minister Abang Johari Openg said yesterday.

He said teams have also been to Bukit Mabong, a district in the Kapit division, and Song, a district 51km from Kapit,

The teams are under the instruction to ditch the MySejahtera app and vaccinate those who walk-in without prior registrations, in a jab-first-register-later policy the chief minister said earlier this week.

“The teams can vaccinate those who come in even though they are not registered yet,” he said after distributing Bantuan Khas Sarawakku Sayang food baskets in Kapit.

However, this policy does not apply to urban areas with internet access.

To illustrate how slow the roll out of the vaccination programme in rural areas, the chief minister said since the vaccination started in late February, but only 8,662 people in Kapit have been vaccinated.

That, he added, represents only 10% of the district’s population.

Deputy Chief Minister James Masing has lauded the policy, saying the MySajethera approach to contain the pandemic discriminates against the rural population.

Masing, the assemblyman for Baleh, said the policy is “the correct approach if we want all Sarawakians 18 years and above to be vaccinated within our scheduled time frame”.

Sarawak has targeted inoculation of all 1.2 million people – including 200,000 foreign residents – eligible for the vaccination by August 31.

Masing said if the state only vaccinates people registered under the MySejathera system, its rural population will never get vaccinated in time.

“Our internet is almost non-existent in longhouses and kampungs. Besides, not everyone in the rural areas have hand phones.

“The myriad of red tape and standard operating procedures have created unnecessary obstacles in the fight against Covid-19 and resulted in unnecessary loss of lives and loved ones,” said Masing, whose elder brother died of the infection last week. – June 11, 2021.