By Zareef Muzammil
SHAH ALAM, Feb 22 — The Covid-19 infectivity rate involving the manufacturing sector is expected to go down by 50 per cent if employers initiate the Preventing and Detecting Outbreaks at Ignition Sites (POIS) programme.
Selangor Menteri Besar Dato’ Seri Amirudin Shari said the system set up by the Selangor Task Force for Covid-19 (STFC) is able to identify positive cases aside from ensuring that factory operations are not affected.
“Currently, 70 to 80 per cent of transmission in Selangor are from industrial areas. So if factories can follow this system, I am sure cases discovered at workplaces can be reduced.
“POIS has been developed and organised to manage Covid-19 infections from the systems aspects and not for us to tackle the situation only after an outbreak has occurred,” he said.
Amirudin was met by reporters after launching the POIS programme at the Nestle factory at Section 15 here today.
Also present were state executive councillor for public health Dr Siti Mariah Mahmud and Nestle (Malaysia) Bhd chief executive officer Juan Aranols.
Meanwhile, Amirudin said the state administration has yet to make it compulsory for all employers to register the system, but is ready to review the suitability of such measures.
“It involves several requirements such as licencing and operational permissions. So at the time being, it is more based on voluntary basis and we may align it and merge with the existing ones,” he said.
On January 6, STFC launched the POIS programme in the effort to curb and reduce workplace clusters.
Registered employers were required to set up a committee consisting of small groups of members with different functions to identify high-risk areas and activities.
The committee must draft an emergency action plan, reduce external contacts and ensure compliance with the standard operating procedures (SOPs).
Other than that, the SELangkah (Step in, safely) mobile application functions to record workers’ exit and entry at the workplace; monitors POIS components and analyses workers’ risks to synchronise with the frequency of Covid-19 screening operations.
