Commuters wait for a transport to leave the Woodlands Causeway across to Singapore from Johor, hours before Malaysia imposes a lockdown on travel due to the coronavirus outbreak March 17, 2020. — Reuters pic
Malaysia’s immigration chief further confirmed yesterday that the lockdown also applies to Malaysians who travel across the Causeway daily to work in Singapore, effectively barring 400,000 people from making their daily commute across the land checkpoints of both countries. “ last minute, have to look for bed, look for towel, toothbrush, all sorts of things. We also have to convince workers, ‘Please don’t go back’,” Tan said.
“My concern is more of trying to make sure that service is undisrupted for my clients. It’s still a small price to pay,” he said, adding that this will hit the company’s bottomline but it is an “unforeseen expense”. The rest are either staying at their relatives’ or friends’ homes, or have decided to stay in Malaysia.
When TODAY was interviewing her over the phone around 7pm, Lee was buying mattresses and pillows at a mall. For Bernard Tay, founder of food-and-beverage outlet Jinjja Chicken, he managed to secure housing arrangements at a cheap rate for two of his staff members by renting a room in an apartment that belongs to the relative of his business partner.Another two Malaysian staff members will be temporarily staying in a hostel at Bugis because it is nearer to their workplace. At NTUC FairPrice, there are about 1,300 Malaysian workers employed by the supermarket chain.