IT is timely that Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah should come clean on the Covid-19 vaccine wastage, especially after six million doses were left unused and some had to be destroyed after expiry.

The public is interested to know how much of this is translated in ringgit and sen.

It appears to me that we are not only suffering from pilferage but also a lot of wastage in government spending.

As the man helming the Health Ministry, Noor Hisham can no longer put the blame on the ministers in the past or the present minister for his own failure.

His job is supposed to safeguard public health and protect all Malaysians against the spread of Covid-19.

It makes me wonder if this is even an attempt to conceal the information or sheer negligence on the part of the ministry.

Blame game

The public would not take this lightly every time the blame game happens.

When something goes wrong, it is because of someone else’s fault – the public, for example, refuses to take the vaccine.

Frankly, when this happens in the corporate sector, Noor Hisham, being equivalent to a chief executive officer, has to bear the entire blame.

If I may put it, this is sheer failure on his part to monitor the stock and expiry dates, and plan the next course of action to ensure that people’s health is protected against Covid-19.

In the worst-case scenario, the vaccine should be made available to states like Selangor that had wanted it badly. Or at least, it should be made available to all foreign workers, whom I believe have yet to vaccinated.

What makes me curious about the latest news break is that, in the past six months, I do not remember any campaign initiated by the ministry to encourage booster jabs.

My last booster was in June last year and that was the last that I heard about the programme.

The only thing I remember was that several cases of Covid-19 in parliament had caused some panic and chaos, and ministry officials wasted no time in swinging into action.

It certainly raises the question as to whether the officers were already told to be on standby for the signal to enter parliament and force the meeting to be adjourned.

But when it comes to such a huge amount of wastage, where was the urgency to fully use the vaccine?

Noor Hisham should know better that he cannot quote wastages in other countries, because such wastages as far as we are concerned, are unacceptable.

Why did it take the prime minister to finally highlight this before we come to know about the unused vaccine doses?

So why did Noor Hisham not sound this out earlier?

Silence is not golden when public funds are involved.

This is not the first time it has happened with government agencies and ministries.

Through the years, we have read reports by the accountant-general’s office regarding huge wastages, but no action was taken against the public servants who were responsible for them.

In my opinion, Noor Hisham’s head should roll as he is the head of the ministry.

In his frequent reports about the number of Covid-19 cases, he should at least make it a point to urge people to get their booster shots or make it available for the public.

Does he not know that one of his many responsibilities as the health director-general is to be proactive, instead of just reporting the figures, which could have been done by the ministry’s public relations officer?

Or was he waiting for the next minister to do it? – January 5, 2023.

* Stephen Ng 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.