The army should provide more for our people asides security or enforcement

We are now seeing the army doing their part to only assist the police force to maintain order and to enforce the movement control order nationwide in order to curb the spread of the coronavirus. What we had observed till today is the movement control order had since been successful despite some hiccups in certain areas which ought to be strictly enforced.

However, asides being only involved in security related enforcement and patrolling activities, the army ought to do more in order to ease the burden of the relevant government agencies in getting their activities or efforts mobilised effectively.

First, how about involving the Army’s Medical Corps? The medical corps of the not only the army but the navy and the air force as well ought to be mobilised to assist their civilian counterparts who are now experiencing shortage of medical staffs. Asides, it has been reported that many hospital and medical staffs are also infected with the virus while providing their service in hospitals, clinics or medical centres respectively. Due to such, the mobilisation of the medical corps from the army, navy and the air force ought to be considered in order to ease the shortage of medical staffs manning hospitals and patients, asides calling in temporary doctors and nurses as well as recalling those who had retired from the medical service.

Furthermore, the medical corps could also assist in providing their assets, facilities and equipment for the use of these hospitals, clinics and medical centres since there are reported shortages of protective equipment, tools and other medical equipment needed for such.

Second, since the increase of those infected with the virus has been increasing continuously almost every day, the government should look into increasing the availability of additional medical facilities in order to receive and treat these patients for quarantine, checks and medication. In this area, the Army Engineering Corps should also be mobilised to assist their civilian counterparts in preparing and construction of temporary medical facilities in order to facilitate the increasing need following the growing number of those who are infected. This kind of temporary medical facilities are needed in order to cater the current emergency situation.

There is no point for the government, particularly the health ministry to claim that they are able to cope with the entire situation today. Due to the continuous increase of those infected, of course, they should raise their hands up and seek for more assistance as early as possible instead of waiting for the situation to be totally out of control, only then it will be too late for recovery measures.

In our words, the armed force should involve themselves more at times of emergency asides from only being assigned to security and enforcement activities. They should demonstrate to our people their readiness to serve the civilians in a wider role other than just being focused on efforts during the war, emergency or security.

Members of the armed force has always been attach to their barracks and we only see them on special occasions but with no real actions being observed. So this is the time the army should demonstrate their what they could do for our people asides of only being a “defence force”.