NIP: No action will be taken against undocumented migrants - KJ
COVID-19 | The Health Ministry will not turn away or take action against anyone who comes to get vaccinated, regardless of their immigration status.
This was the promise made by Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin today.
"The priority of the ministry is to...
COVID-19 | The Health Ministry will not turn away or take action against anyone who comes to get vaccinated, regardless of their immigration status.
This was the promise made by Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin today.
"The priority of the ministry is to provide vaccinations to everyone who resides in Malaysia.
"We do not turn anyone away. We provide the vaccines for free to Malaysians, non-Malaysians, and non-Malaysians who are here without documents.
"And we do not take action against anyone who comes to our PPVs (vaccination centres) to get vaccinated," he told a press conference in Putrajaya today.
His assurance came after Home Minister Hamzah Zainudin told the Dewan Rakyat yesterday that healthcare workers are required to notify security forces if undocumented migrants show up at health facilities and PPVs.
Hamzah said this was the standard operating procedure decided by the cabinet for vaccinating those without proper travel documents.
Khairy, however, sidestepped a question when he was pressed further to state explicitly if this means healthcare workers would not be required to report the group's presence at healthcare facilities.
"As I said earlier, our main focus is to administer vaccines regardless of their immigration status," he said.
The issue of immigration law enforcement has long become a bane for the country's mass Covid-19 vaccination exercise, which aims at vaccinating as many of the population as possible including the hard-to-reach groups.
Since the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme kicked off in February, the health authority had been facing difficulty to convince the undocumented to come forward for inoculation as the group fears that action would be taken against them.
This was especially after agencies under the Home Ministry last year carried out raids at areas that were placed under lockdown due to the high number of coronavirus cases, against earlier promise by the government that undocumented migrants would not face legal repercussions when they present themselves for screening tests and treatment.
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