Senior Minister (Security Cluster) Ismail Sabri Yaakob has announced that those who want to make interstate travel from their hometown can report their intention to the police very soon. This announcement was part of the minister’s daily media briefing earlier today.
Minister Ismail stated that the application can be made through the Gerak Malaysia app starting from 25 April onwards. Given this announcement, it looks like the app which was previously not approved for usage by the National Security Council has since received the operational greenlight from the government.
Those that do not have access to smartphone can also apply at their nearest police station although they must call the station first and schedule an appointment in order to avoid large crowd coming to the station at the same time.
This decision was taken to address the concern from some members of the public that have been stuck at their hometown for more than a month after they went back before the Movement Control Order (MCO) started. That being said, Minister Ismail insists that there is still no guarantee that those who applied can make the interstate travel anytime soon.
This is because the government will only able to decide after it gather the necessary data from those applications and then obtain recommendations from Ministry of Health. Further announcements including appropriate standard operational procedure for interstate travel will only be done after that.
Minister Ismail pointed out during the briefing that even if the government proceed with this move, it is likely that applicants will only able to make the interstate travel after 1 May. So, all in all, nothing is confirmed yet at the moment aside from the application process.
At this moment, the Gerak Malaysia app is still in the same state as per our first look that we published last week. Aside from generating QR-based identify code, seems like there is no new feature has been implemented in the app since then.
With today’s announcement, looks like the public will still end up with two COVID-19 app from the government, with the other one being the MySejahtera app which has been made compulsory for p-hailing delivery riders by Ministry of Transportation.
I certainly hope that the government would take some effort to properly explain the justifications behind each apps and their proper usages. Else, many of us would just end up being confused by their existence.
(Source: RTM live feed – [starts at 15:36 mark].)
