KUCHING: Datuk Seri Fatimah Abdullah feels it is risky to allow barber shops and laundry services to operate so soon during the third movement control order (MCO) phase.
The Welfare, Community Wellbeing, Women, Family and Childhood Development Minister pointed out that barber shops and hair salons involved close contact and the clients would have to remove their masks and share seats, combs, scissors, and other paraphernalia.
“People are already getting used to social distancing and accepting the inconveniences (faced during the MCO) for the sake of our dear lives. (It is) not the time to loosen things up yet,” she said.
She noted that the extension was inevitable and the MCO may cause inconveniences, create anxiety, and bring hardship and pain due to the loss of income for some.
However, she stressed, “Caution should still be the order of the day.”
“Otherwise, all the hard work, the long hours put in by our medical workers — not forgetting the risks they have faced to cure sick victims, the strict enforcement by our frontliners to contain the transmission of Covid-19, the huge budget incurred by the government to mitigate Covid-19 holistically will all go down the drain.
“We will be back to square one,” said Fatimah.
She said that the general public had accepted the extended MCO as inevitable so much so that some had even questioned the decision and rationale in allowing barber shops and laundry services to operate.
She said that haircuts could be done at home, or they could wait, while laundry work could be shared among family members at home.
