KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's largest homegrown halal retailer and wholesaler Mydin Mohamed Holdings Berhad (Mydin) is frustrated with the latest development to extend Phase One of the National Recovery Plan, which sees stricter standard operating procedures in place.
Its managing director Datuk Dr Ameer Ali Mydin said the current MCO was akin to 'sledgehammer' method where all sectors would be continuously affected.
He said the government should instead go ahead with target lockdown, such as the Enhanced MCO at affected areas to effectively control the Covid-19.
"The government should utilise the Hotspot Identification for Dynamic Engagement (HIDE) system to identify and impose lockdown wherever possible, not continue with total lockdown.
"The current method is unfair to states with low cases. If they see high cases in Klang Valley then enforce the lockdown there and not the whole country," he said when contacted.
He also said the government should actively improve screening to isolate as many positive cases as possible.
At the same time, he said the government should vaccinate more people with the first one vaccine dose and delay the second dose.
Referring to reports in other countries, he said this method had proven to be successful whenever the vaccine supplies were limited.
Earlier today, Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said that Phase One of the movement control under the National Recovery Plan (NRP) would be extended.
He said phase one had to be extended as the number of Covid-19 cases in the country had not dipped below the threshold value of 4,000 required to move to the next phase.
Covid-19 cases today is still above the 5,000 mark.
Recently, Malaysia Retailers Association (MRA) had also rejected the notion to extend the MCO beyond June 28.
In a statement, its president Tan Sri William Cheng said the non-essential products retail sectors should be allowed to open immediately as they were apparently not the root cause of the problems.
He said the retail industry did start to show some positive sign of recovery despite some of the retail sectors being ordered to shut down under MCO 2.0 & Conditional MCO.
However, the announcement of MCO 3.0 in May this year, transited to Full MCO (FMCO) in June 2021 had caused the retail industry to crash back to zero.
"MRA has been consistently appealing against a total lockdown due to the irreparable damage to the retail industry and the livelihoods of so many at stake as well as to the Malaysian economy," he said earlier this week.