MALAYSIANS deserve a pat on their backs for the way the Covid-19 pandemic has almost been tamed after more than two months of collective sacrifices and forbearance.
In recent weeks, we have seen mostly just double-digit increases in cases and few fatalities.
But even so, Malaysians should not let their guard down. Not yet. There is a noticeable and potentially troubling uptrend in the daily reports in the past few days, nudging daily cases back to three-digit figures.
Worse, perhaps, the majority of these are not from Malaysians. Does this presage that Malaysia is tracking the same worrisome trajectory that Singapore has discovered: the virus spread reduced to a trickle among the local citizenry only for that among its foreign workforce to spike sharply?
There is, of course, a key difference between us and Singapore that may hopefully preclude the Singapore trajectory repeating here. Unlike Singapore, Malaysia introduced the Movement Control Order (MCO) early, and the ensuing Enhanced MCO and Conditional MCO.
These might have insulated Malaysians from spreading the virus to the migrant population on a mass scale and vice versa. That said, there is simply no room for complacency still in our ongoing battle to flatten the Covid-19 curve.
Therefore, potential new Covid-19 clusters where migrants are known to congregate must be quickly identified and screenings intensified. Given that migrant workers in Malaysia represent something like a tenth of our population, intensified identification and screenings of migrant clusters are easier said than done.
The added complication will be that as the MCO eases and businesses resume normal activity, the pace of migrants mingling with local citizens may also resume, especially if employers cut corners with new standard operating procedures for businesses coming into force.
Public-private sector collaboration and consultations will have to be the way forward so that issues related to the handling of migrant workers are addressed.
There has been unending debate about cutting our overdependence on migrant workers to keep the economy humming along. While this has taken on greater urgency given the added complications our migrant workforce presents to those tasked with dealing with the pandemic, this debate will have to temporarily make way for handling a potential health crisis among the migrant population.
Our migrant population and its many issues have unfortunately always been at the low end of our collective consciousness. The migrants mostly blend in with the local community and are, therefore, a largely invisible force in our midst, until a crisis such as a pandemic forces us to confront the issues head-on.
These migrants, despite sometimes negative perceptions, have been an almost indispensable part of our economic and overall wellbeing.
We owe it to them, especially in tough times such as now, to ease them through their predicaments on matters such as keeping them healthy, ensuring that their living conditions are conducive and reassuring them about their continued employment.
Post Covid-19, the government may have to review our priorities and overall outlook on migrant workers. This pandemic, if any, should have rekindled our basic humanity and taught us to be more compassionate about our fellow human beings.