DEVELOPMENT OF PREVENTIVE COUNTERMEASURES TO COMBAT COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED ENTERPRISES IN MALAYSIA

Abstract

The World Health Organization announced the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and it has since infected over 286 million people worldwide in 2021, killing over 5.4 million. In Malaysia, the disease infected approximately 2,758,086 people, resulting in 31,487 deaths. Malaysian government has enacted a Movement Control Order (MCO) under the National Recovery Plan (NRP) to contain the infection. The multiple MCO phases resulted in the closure of numerous small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), resulting in revenue loss and employment losses. The objectives of this research include developing an efficient COVID-19 preventive countermeasure or enhance existing MITI Safe@Work guidelines for Malaysian SMEs and to suggest improvements to the National Recovery Plan roadmap and the MySejahtera system. An open-ended questionnaire survey is sent to Malaysian workers with safety or health background to obtain their professional information. By using Excel and NVivo software, 15 respondents’ answers are chosen for the qualitative analysis. The results include analysing experts’ valuation and insights on the existing countermeasures, NRP roadmap, MySejahtera system, development of preventive protocols for SMEs workplace, suggestion of improvements to the NRP roadmap and MySejahtera system application. In conclusion, these indicate that there are still improvements that can be made to the guidelines implemented by the government in the future with proper studies.