A foreigner was sentenced to a year in jail after being found guilty by the Lahad Datu magistrates’ court for the illegal possession of a Malaysian identity card and using it to obtain two doses of the Covid-19 vaccine.
The woman, who was not identified, was charged under Regulation 25(1)(e) of the National Registration Regulations 1990 (Amendment 2007) for deliberately having another person’s identity card and falsely using it as her own on two occasions.
There can be few countries on earth where a woman would be sent to jail for seeking to become vaccinated from Covid.
Her crime? To be a foreigner stuck in Malaysia for whatever reason and thus unable to receive a vaccine except by using someone else’s ID card.
Would the Sabah judge have preferred her to continue as a potential spreader of the disease instead?
Malaysia, has plenty of doses of vaccine and has expressed a willingness to make sure all people in the country (whether foreign or not) should be protected for their own benefit and others. That has been the attitude of all sensible governments with supplies of Covid vaccine everywhere.
The scandal is why was this woman obliged to resort to subterfuge to get her vaccine in the first place? It is those responsible for her dilemma who should be jailed, not just for threatening her health but everybody else’s.