Covid-19 crisis A broad minded approach to coping with this financial crisis
Under code Orange of the disease outbreak framework, workplaces are required to implement measures to take temperature of workers and visitors and to collect contact tracing details.

I hope that the government realize their approach is short sighted and harmful.

Why?

When there is a disease outbreak, the businesses are already suffering from a loss of revenue due to poor business and a loss of productivity of their workers. 

The code Orange response measures require them to incur additional costs.

I estimate that 5,000 to 10,000 workplaces have to implement these measures and they are likely to involve an estimated 50,000 workers incurring a monthly cost of $150 million. While some workers could be deployed from the existing workforce, additional cost have to be incurred in other cases. 

If the temperate taking is organized separately by the government, the work involved in temperature checking will probably involve only 10,000 temporary workers. The monthly cost is likely to be $30 million. This is  one-fifth of the actual cost that are now being incurred by the businesses.

The new approach cost less because it makes better use of the manpower and can get more people being checked. The standard of checking, using workers trained centrally, is likely to be more reliable.

While my estimate of $30 million and $150 million may not be the correct figures, they do nevertheless suggest that it is possible to spend less nationally and achieve better outcomes.

It is short sighted for the government to get businesses to incur a huge cost (my estimate of $150 million) when they could handle the work for a smaller cost to the nation.

While the government tries to help the businesses with subsidies and financial help, they could have taken the first step to avoid getting them to incur this additional expense in the first place.

The current approach of the government is short sighted and wasteful. 

I hope that the relevant ministers are listening. 

Tan Kin Lian
 

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