KUALA LUMPUR:The Malaysian Furniture Council (MFC) is appreciative of the government’s decision to include foreign workers under the National COVID-19 Immunisation programme which provides free vaccine.

Its secretary-general Matthew Law said the vaccine will definitely assist in combating COVID more aggressively compared to the implementation of stricter standard operating procedures (SOP) such as creating isolation rooms and introducing working bubbles within the workplace.

In this regard, he said although the association was grateful that the government had allowed the furniture industry to continue operating during the lockdown, adhering to the strict SOP was actually costing the industry more.

He cited social distancing measures which affected production capacity due to the lesser number of workers involved.

“We welcome the government’s decision to immunise foreign workers for free as the furniture industry is unfortunately still dependent on foreign labour.

“Every industry is trying to survive. The free vaccine will put a sigh of relief on our players especially small and medium enterprises (SME) that are struggling to balance their books,” he told Bernama.

He said this in response to the National COVID-19 Immunisation programme that was launched by Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin yesterday.

“For over a year, the country’s economy has been in a closed, partially open scenario putting a strain on everyone,” he added.

Nevertheless, he expressed that the industry had some concerns regarding the immunisation process for the foreign workers.

“According to the guidebook, the immunisation of foreign workers will be in Phase Three. We would like to enquire, will the immunisation of our foreign and local workers in the factory be done concurrently or are we still required to separate them?” he asked.

He said the industry was also curious about which type of vaccine would be administered to the workers as it was reported in the plan that the Pfizer vaccine despite having an efficiency of 95 per cent, required a storage temperature of -75 degrees Celsius.

“Most of our factories are located in clusters or outskirts, which could be difficult to provide such facilities to store this vaccine.

“Therefore as an initiative, the big companies of the industry are willing to cover the cost of potential vaccines other than those stated in the guidebook as long as it obtains the approval of the Health Ministry to speed up the vaccination process within the sector,” he said.

Law said overall, MFC envisaged better times ahead, pointing to data furnished by the Malaysia External Trade Development Corporation (Matrade) showing export figures for December 2020 reaching RM1.361 billion or up 16.7 per cent compared to December 2019.

“This will bring some spillover benefits to the related sub-sectors despite the movement control order (MCO) imposed from March 2020-April 2020.

“Although the latest MCO 2.0 has been predicted to impact the export figures, we remain optimistic that year 2021, while challenging, is still laden with growth opportunities,” he added.

Muhyiddin in his announcement yesterday said the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine will arrive in the country this Sunday while the rollout for implementation of the immunisation begins in phases from Feb 26.

-- BERNAMA