SHAH ALAM — Selangor allows non-Muslim houses of worship to reopen tomorrow, provided that all stipulated standard operating procedures (SOP) are in place.
State Health, Welfare, Women Empowerment and Family Committee chairman, Dr Siti Mariah Mahmud said the state government adopted the new SOP issued by the Ministry of National Unity with additional guidelines.
“All are allowed to visit their houses of worship except those high risk and very high risk groups.
“However, those who are 60 years old and above and healthy are allowed to attend religious activities in the houses of worship,” she told a press conference here today.
The three additional guidelines were the low-risk category, high-risk group category, such as those 60 to 69 years of age, who had illnesses like high blood pressure, and, very high risk category, for people over the age of 70 and with chronic illness.
Dr Siti Mariah said, at this time, children under 12 years old were still not allowed to attend any of the houses of worship in Selangor.
She said through the additional guidelines distributed to the managements of houses of worship today, the state government had urged them to appoint officials to oversee the logistics and the movements of worshipers to ensure they adhered to social distancing.
She said the managements of the houses of worship should also ensure the maximum capacity allowed at any one time was one-third of the area of the houses of worship, taking into account the social distancing of 1.5 meters per person.
“All houses of worship are required to register with the ‘SELangah (Langkah Masuk Dengan Selamat)’ application for contact tracking purposes and displaying the QR codes at the entrances and not being in contact or shaking hands with others,” she said.
She said the Standing Committee on Non-Islamic Affairs of Selangor was currently devising a procedure that could be used by the religious adherents to apply for slots so that they could attend their houses of worship following the capacity that was allowed under the Recovery Movement Control Order (RMCO).
— BERNAMA
