This comes after home minister Hamzah Zainudin said the plan for large-scale operations to detain undocumented migrants was to ensure that they possessed valid documents for vaccination purposes.
Khairy previously said he would speak with Hamzah about vaccinating undocumented migrants, with a joint paper between both ministries on how to approach the matter to be submitted soon.
Tenaganita executive director Glorene Das expressed concern over Khairy’s silence over the matter, with it almost being a week since he said he would speak with Hamzah.
However, she remained hopeful that Khairy would keep the promises he made to undocumented migrants and push back against Hamzah’s plan.
“We are hopeful that he will push his proposal through, practising the principle of inclusiveness, and not give in to the demands of the home ministry,” she told FMT.
She also told Hamzah to look at his own backyard and to question the immigration department as to why there were so many undocumented migrants in the country.
“If the department functions with transparency, integrity and basic principles, would we have a system so embedded with well-documented corruption in Malaysia?
“Instead of lamenting about protecting the rights of Malaysians, the ministry should work on cleaning and revamping the immigration system with the right leadership,” she said.
North-South Initiative director Adrian Pereira urged Khairy to engage with migrant leaders and NGOs on the best way to boost migrants’ confidence to come forward for vaccinations.
He said it was shocking that this issue was yet to be resolved when it has been more than a year of living with the pandemic, adding that the UN’s International Organization of Migration (IOM) had a roundtable on this topic just a few months ago.
“Don’t tell me this was not discussed in Cabinet meetings and that they have not come up with a consensus?” he told FMT.
“It took a lot of work to get the migrant communities to buy into the vaccination programme. This kind of statement will undo a lot of our hard work and put Malaysians in danger if migrants are not vaccinated,” he said, referring to Hamzah’s remarks.
Calling for transparency and honesty from the government, Pereira expressed concern over getting migrants to come forward for vaccinations as there were no “black and white” instructions to the community on how to access the jabs.