SARAWAKIANS are questioning the feasibility of observing Covid-19 standard operating procedures during the Gawai rice harvest festival on June 1.

Many will have to scale down celebrations, and give rituals requiring close contact and mass participation a miss.

Under the SOPs, which also applied to the recent Aidilfitri holiday, hosts are allowed to receive a maximum of 20 guests, and only on the first day of the celebrations.

Dayaks like Francis Teron take a dim view of the rules.

“If visitor No. 21 comes, I can’t chase him away simply because the ministers say only 20 are allowed,” said the lawyer, who lives in Kg Stenggang on the Bau-Lundu road.

He and his wife are preparing their home for a modest celebration.

“We are not exactly having an open house, but we are calling over a few close friends and family members.”

Teron said these are people with which he has interacted regularly over the past four weeks, so he sees no reason to strictly follow the rule on the number of guests allowed at any one time.

“We are not sick. Anyway, who is going to check and enforce the rule?”

Anchon Raoh, a resident of the Sebangki Panjai longhouse in Lubok Antu, will also keep things simple for Gawai this year.

She said she will not spend much this time around as her children, in-laws and grandchildren are not returning to Sarawak due to interstate travel restrictions under the conditional movement-control order.

“It will just be us,” said the 58-year-old, referring to herself, her husband and their three-year-old grandson they are looking after.

However, she said, the tradition of receiving guests will not be abandoned, and she will welcome anyone who drops by her unit, one of the 50 in the longhouse.

Some longhouses can accommodate more than 100 families, and all of them feature a long corridor outside the units that serves as a common area for residents.

Given this, certain SOPs will be near impossible to follow, said a resident in Lubok Antu.

He questioned whether visiting different units in the same longhouse will be taken as travelling from house to house.

“When I leave my ‘bilek’ (unit) for the ‘ruai’ (common area), I am technically still inside my house,” said the resident, who declined to be named.

“So, going from one ‘bilek’ to another is like going from one room to another within the same house.

“That’s not house-to-house visiting, so I don’t think the SOPs apply. If it’s going to another longhouse, then the SOPs apply.” – May 30, 2020.