Betong District Council secretary Charlie Keling (center) exchanging views with Uggah (left) and Dr Richard (right) at the new shoplot site.
KUCHING (March 2): The Village Security and Development Committees (JKKKs) in Betong have been roped in to enforce the lockdowns in nine longhouses in the district, said Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas.
In a statement today, he said the leaders and members of the JKKKs are tasked with community policing works in their respective longhouses, adding that they are to ensure all the inhabitants comply with all standard operation procedures (SOPs) as laid out by the Health Department.
The State Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) chairman said the Betong Division Resident’s office would brief the JKKKs on how to execute their new responsibilities.
“We want them to ensure all inhabitants stay in their own ‘bilek’ in the longhouse during the period. We want them to continue to observe the SOPs.
“They are not to move around in order to mix around so that they can help in preventing and ending the spread .
“In this way too, the committee can relieve other enforcement authorities like the police, The People’s Volunteer Corps (Rela), local councils and the military of such tasks. These authorities can then focus on implementing the lockdown from outside,” he said in a statement today.
Uggah said the system was basically a self-enforced discipline within the longhouse, adding that the time has come to pass on the responsibilities of self-regulation to the longhouse chiefs and the JKK members.
“We have been doing community policing all these while. Now we are doing it under this very difficult time and circumstances. We will see how this work out .
“We have seen in the past how some longhouses residents seemed to have difficulty in discipline, had sneaked out and their lackadaisical attitude, (which) had resulted in increases in positive cases,” he added.
SDMC in its daily update statement today said Betong recorded 49 new positive cases, all linked to the Jalan Muhibbah Cluster. One death was also recorded in Betong.
Earlier today, Uggah chaired the Betong Division Disaster Management Committee meeting on the Covid-19 pandemic situation in the division.
The meeting was also attended by political secretary to the Chief Minister Dr Richard Rapu and heads of various government departments, held at the Resident’s Office here.
At the meeting, Betong Division Resident Friday Belik and the Divisional Medical Officer Dr Johnny Pangkas had briefed him on the latest Covid-19 situation.
Meanwhile, Uggah expressed his satisfaction with preparations put out by the Betong Divisional Disaster Committee in handling the pandemic.
He said the committee is in the process of setting up two more Low Risk Treatment and Quarantine Centres (PKRC) to cope up with any eventualities, located at Spaoh and Simpang Layar.
Currently, Betong has one such centre located at the Dewan Sukan Tan Sri Datuk Amar Stephen Kalong Ningkan.
Meanwhile, Uggah urged the relevant departments to do their best in convincing more people to give their consent to be vaccinated.
He was informed by Friday that so far out of 122,371 people in the division, some 30, 371 had responded saying they would go for it, adding that another 615 had decided against it as they were influenced by the negative social postings and fake news .
Later today, Uggah made a short visit to Spaoh to check on the reconstruction progress of the eight shoplots destroyed by the 2019 Chinese New Year Eve fire on February 4.