BINTULU MP Tiong King Sing wants the city’s health department senior health official transferred immediately over the handling of the Covid-19 contaminated liquefied natural gas tanker Seri Alam.

Tiong has accused the officer of being “frivolous” about the outbreak on board the flagged tanker that had docked at Bintulu port on Tuesday and a failure of duty to report the incident to the district officer who chairs the Bintulu Disaster Management Committee.

The failure to report, he said, had left the state disaster management committee in Kuching in the dark.

“According to my understanding, the state committee is unaware of this matter,” he said without naming the officer.

The tanker had sailed from the Japanese port of Toyama Shinko on August 1 after a stopover of five days.

The vessel, which made a short stopover at the port of Labuan on August 10, had arrived in Bintulu with five crewmen down with Covid-19.

Initial investigations showed that a crewman who had signed on in Japan could have brought the infection on board.

Tiong said this is the second time the department has failed to notify the district officer of an incident linked to the pandemic.

“This lapse cannot be tolerated or ignored in the interest of public safety and health.

“The health of the Bintulu people must be our top priority, and cannot be subject to carelessness in carrying out the established standard operating procedures designed to contain the Covid-19 outbreak,” he said in reference the Jupiter tanker that docked in Bintulu on July 13 with an infected crewman.

Follow up screening detected two more crewmen positive for Covid-19.

“I wish to point out that poor decision-making by the senior officers in the Health Department during the outbreak of the coronavirus have had severe repercussions on Bintulu’s health.”

Tiong is pressing for the transfer after the ministry’s secretary-general had said the officer’s performance did not warrant removal.

He said the minister “had implied” that the officer “will be transferred out for serious dereliction of duty”.

Calling on the state health director to “take this matter seriously”, Tiong said the state disaster management committee should investigate the failure in the reporting chain. – August 22, 2020.