PUTRAJAYA, already late in legislating a force majeure law against the economic impact of Covid-19, still has yet to enforce the bill passed in August, even as a second round of movement restrictions have been imposed on certain states, lawyer Syahredzan Johan said.

The Temporary Measures for Reducing the Impact of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19) Bill 2020 was passed by the Dewan Rakyat on August 25 and by the senate on September 22 still has not been implemented at a time when people need relief from the economic impact of the virus, the DAP political secretary said.

“The bill still hasn’t been gazetted and implemented. It’s been seven months since the first movement-control order (MCO) in March. Now we are in the third wave of the pandemic, with new cases in the triple digits daily.

“The conditional MCO has been imposed in Sabah, Selangor and the federal territories, and is impacting a lot of people.

“The bill should be enforced quickly even though it has a lot of weaknesses, as it will still provide some relief to the people,” said Syahredzan, who is the political secretary to Iskandar Puteri MP Lim Kit Siang.

He said the government had been criticised earlier over the bill as it was not comprehensive enough in giving protection to those impacted by Covid-19.

Putrajaya was also criticised for tabling the bill late, when other countries already legislated theirs months ago during the early stages of the pandemic.

“It is as if the federal government doesn’t care.”

Syahredzan said while there are various processes for the bill to be gazetted and enforced, the government should have more urgency and speed up the process. – October 16, 2020.