Too early for ‘no quarantine’ travellers still

I REFER to news reports about the National Recovery Council’s proposal to reopen the country’s borders as early as March 1 without the mandatory quarantine requirement.

While we do need to move on from the pandemic to the endemic stage of Covid-19, we must first create confidence among Malaysians that the situation is under control and that the healthcare system is able to cope with the current needs of the population.

Although the proposal to reopen our borders would provide the much needed boost to our economic recovery, especially in the tourism sector, I think the proposed timing is way too early.

In the past few days, we have seen a surge in the number of Covid-19 infections.

As a result, some people are beginning to reduce their outdoor activities and working from home is being reactivated. How would these people feel if we open our doors too soon to foreign travellers?

Can we consider Malaysia in the league of tourism-reliant countries such as Thailand, which is now wooing foreign travellers/visitors to its shores by offering quarantine-free visas?

For all we know, “The Land of Smiles”, which attracted 40 million foreign tourists and generated more than US$60bil (RM251bil) from tourism in 2019, simply cannot wait to press their “welcome button”.

In our case, however, does the tourism sector contribute so much to the country’s Gross Domestic Product that it merits the reopening of our international borders to leisure tourists at a time when Covid-19 infections, whether due to Omicron or other variants, are in the five figures?

I believe we should concentrate on promoting domestic tourism for the time being and also create more travel bubbles in addition to Langkawi.

A specially curated domestic tourism campaign targeting Malaysians would be more appropriate and would also be in line with the Malaysian Family concept.

ZARI MALAYSIANA , Petaling Jaya