Rafidah, who headed the ministry for two decades, said the government’s own statistics revealed that the manufacturing sector accounted for 48% of cases from Covid-19 clusters.

“This is not a ‘blame game’,” she said in a Facebook post today.

Business entities, she added, were suffering, from the “biggest to the smallest”, as well as micro businesses.

“And the infections are continuing to be worrying.”

On Monday, Azmin denied allegations that the manufacturing sector was the biggest contributor to the high number of Covid-19 cases in Malaysia.

He said based on data released by the health ministry, Covid-19 cases involving the manufacturing sector were only between 5% and 10%.

“Therefore, it is not right to blame the economic sector, especially the manufacturing sector,” he said when asked to comment on the call for factories to be closed due to the continued high number of infections.

Two days ago, however, home minister Hamzah Zainudin insisted that the manufacturing sector was the main contributor to Covid-19 clusters, saying most of the infections were from clusters in workers’ dormitories — both manufacturing and businesses.

Rafidah went on to call for Putrajaya to review some of the rules set for these industries to avoid not only being prohibited from operating but the possibility of having their contracts as suppliers terminated.

She also noted that there were factories producing for the export market that had been ordered to close, and warned that local companies could lose their foreign markets “for good”.

Rafidah said the government could make it mandatory for these companies to apply Covid-19 SOPs in terms of operations and healthcare, apart from having the workforce vaccinated.

“Certainly, this fine-tuning of lockdown rules will not negatively impact Malaysia’s exports, the companies and employment,” she said.