AT a time when Covid infection rates in Selangor are in the thousands with numerous daily deaths of senior citizens in the state, the insensitivity and incompetence of the management at the IDCC vaccination centre (PPV) is totally unacceptable.

My second AstraZeneca vaccination was scheduled at 2pm yesterday. I duly arrived at the entrance at 1.45pm and there was already a queue at the entrance on level 5 of the car park. I showed my appointment and the female People’s Volunteer Corps member simply said, “Sila beratur”. That held me up about 15 minutes in the hot and humid conditions because she had to check the profiles for each individual.

In the registration hall there was already a big crowd and we were ushered to move forward from chair to chair. These are fabric chairs, ideal breeding grounds for viruses. Perhaps our sanitation minister should also spend her budget disinfecting the furniture at PPVs. Anyway, based on my queue number there were about 80 people ahead, so what is the point of a scheduled appointment (complete with an auto-voice reminder the day before)?

After registration I was asked to go to station 4. It was full with some people standing against the wall waiting for their turn to be inoculated. To make matters worse there was no system to cope with the numbers. 

I inquired from a young stocky man about senior citizen priority and with a raised voice he said, “Semua orang hari ni senior citizen!” Whether he is a volunteer or otherwise, certain etiquette must be maintained. He was obviously ignorant or simply lying because while some of the elderly were accompanied by their children, there were others waiting to be vaccinated. 

After my jab, which went very well thanks to the personnel manning booth no. 4, I managed to speak to the person in charge and he said that MySejahtera allowed for exceptions; about 40%. This is appalling. We don’t mind waiting, we also don’t mind all the extra precautions imposed on us especially by our children. However, when we – especially the medically vulnerable ones like myself – are made to mix with the young and possibly asymptomatic, it becomes an entirely different matter.

My first vaccination took no more than 20 minutes. This time I had to endure an extra 40 minutes of unnecessary additional exposure. No thanks to an overzealous government desperate to show good numbers. – August 10, 2021.

* Zulfikar Sulaiman reads The Malaysian Insight.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.