Govt urged to give shop owners grace period to get updated

Log book together with MySejahtera QR code were displayed at the entrace of a restaurant.

MELAKA: The government should consider giving a grace period of two months before making the use of MySejahtera mandatory for all coffee shops in the country, says Datuk Ho Su Mong.

The Malaysia-Singapore Coffee Shop Proprietors’ General Association president said Putrajaya should take this into consideration as most of the owners were not digitally literate.

“We hope the government will not compel all coffee shops to have the app right away to register customers without taking into account the difficulties faced by the owners.

“Not all owners are IT-savvy. We have started providing specific training to our members in stages on how to handle the digital gadgets, ” he said.

“The government must consider giving some leeway for us to train our members in switching to digital mode.”

Ho said while they fully supported the government’s move to use MySejahtera app for Covid-19 contact tracing purposes, some of the owners might need some time to adapt to the digital method.

“The older generation of owners need time to learn how to convert the manual registration as compared to the younger ones, who can instantly convert the registering mechanism, ” he said.

“The transformation should be carried out gradually and not overnight to ensure better preparedness by traditional coffee shops owners.”

Separately, the night market at Jonker Walk would allow those without smartphones to manually register their entry only from this weekend.

Jonker Walk management deputy chairman Datuk Gan Tian Loo said manual registration would be made stricter with cross checks on the information provided by patrons in the logbooks.

“This is to avoid any false information provided by market-goers, ” he said.

Since it was now mandatory for business premises to use the MySejahtera app, Gan said: “The manual registration using log books would be only available for senior citizens and those without smartphones, starting this weekend, ” he said.

Gan said based on previous records, about 85% of market-goers used the app to register.

Digital registration was encouraged, he added.

He said business operators were strict in complying with the standard operating procedure due to the frequent patrols by enforcement officers.