KUALA LUMPUR, March 31 — Pos Malaysia, Grab, Parkson, St John Ambulance of Malaysia, and sports marketing agency Living Minds will be collaborating with the government to boost the national Covid-19 vaccine rollout, amid slow registrations for vaccination.
Vaccine Minister and chairman of the Covid-19 Immunisation Task Force (CITF), Khairy Jamaluddin, announced today that these private companies have agreed to help CITF out in various ways to boost the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (PICK).
Pos Malaysia, the country’s postal delivery service, will be helping to distribute vaccine promotional flyers delivered by postmen going door-to-door throughout the country, especially in rural areas and states with low vaccination registration rates.
“One thing about Pos Malaysia, which I don’t think any other company or corporation or agency has, is its ubiquitousness. They are everywhere, every single part of Malaysia,” Khairy said.
Pos Malaysia will be also using social media platforms to send messages to the public on the national Covid-19 vaccination programme, besides launching the campaign #BersamaMencegahCovid-19 to encourage vaccine registration among the public.
Besides that, Khairy also announced that Pos Malaysia will be carrying out an internal campaign among their 22,000 workers to increase their awareness on the importance of registering and getting vaccinated.
As of March 30, only about 31 per cent of adults in Malaysia have registered on MySejahtera for their Covid-19 shots, or 7.4 million people. Vaccine registration rates are the lowest in Sabah, Kelantan, Terengganu, and Pahang.
The vaccine minister also announced e-hailing company Grab’s role in helping out CITF, which is by providing a direct link to the MySejahtera registration site through Grab’s application that has millions of users in Malaysia.
Khairy further said that CITF is working with Grab to map out vaccination sites so that people can use Grab’s e-hailing service to get to the vaccination centres.
“We are discussing further with Grab on how we can map out vaccination centres to ensure that people who have appointments with the vaccination centres find it easy to get e-hailing to and fro their houses,” the vaccine minister said.
Furthermore, retailer Parkson has agreed to set up vaccine registration centres at 40 outlets and will be setting up vaccine information counters in 20 of its outlets —six in the central zone, six in the northern zone, three in the southern zone, one in the East Coast, four in Sabah, and two in Sarawak.
“All the Parkson stores will help us with the registration counter and someone who can assist people, the customers coming in to register for the vaccine,” Khairy said this afternoon.
St John Ambulance of Malaysia has also agreed to provide volunteers as well as their ambulances for the national Covid-19 vaccination programme. The first-aid and ambulance services group, which is more than a century old, will also be setting up vaccine registration counters at 15 blood donation drives between May 28 and May 30.
Meanwhile, sports marketing agency Living Minds has agreed to appoint 12 of their footballers, who are under their management, as Covid-19 vaccine ambassadors, whereby they will be using their personal social media platforms to encourage people to register for the vaccine, besides spreading information on the importance of getting vaccinated.
“The corporate collaboration is a manifestation of the whole-of-society approach involving collaboration with other parties to make the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme a success,” Khairy added.
