Association demands gov’t stop repeated quarantine measures

Two local residents delivered a petition of complaint to the government’s headquarters yesterday, urging the Macau SAR to stop measures that require mandatory 14-day quarantines be repeated.
The pair were representing an association called the Hong Kong Macau Residents Mutual Care Platform. One of the representatives, surnamed Cheng, complained that Macau and its neighboring regions have been implementing quarantine policies which force people to undergo quarantine multiple times in different places.
In Cheng’s opinion, since the Covid-19 situation in Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China has stabilized, residents from Guangdong province, Macau and Hong Kong who have not recorded any outbound travel in the past 14 days should only be quarantined for 14 days in one of the three places upon presentation of a negative Covid-19 test result. These people should no longer have to undertake another 14-day quarantine when arriving the city.
On Wednesday, the government announced that a special ferry service between Macau’s Taipa Ferry Terminal and Hong Kong International Airport was being arranged.
Cheng said that the three Pearl River Delta provinces should establish a permanent mutual recognition and accreditation mechanism, especially for pandemic prevention.
The government previously said that it had received requests from over 400 overseas Macau students expressing the wish to return to Macau with the help of the SAR government.
Earlier, the government had arranged a chartered flight to Hubei province to bring back over 60 Macau residents to the city. The SAR government also assisted overseas Macau citizens to travel back to Macau from Hong Kong airport. All these returnees underwent a 14-day quarantine in local hotels.
In addition to the two aforementioned proposals, Cheng urged the Macau local government to subsidize unemployed residents.
Some members of the Macau public have been calling on the local government to give employee subsidies to more workers, and Cheng expressed a similar opinion.
Cheng proposed that the local government give the 15,000 pataca employee subsidy to “infants, students, women, the unemployed, the injured, the disabled, the retired and many more venerable groups.”
Nonetheless, the government should increase the scale of financial support in the youth entrepreneurship subsidy program. Cheng wants the government to subsidize youth entrepreneurships by giving them 500,000 patacas, compared to the current 300,000 pataca subsidy. Priority should be given to sectors related to hygiene and pandemic prevention he said, adding that the repayment period should be extended to at least 10 years. Cheng also noted that companies that have gone bankrupt should be exempt from paying back loans.
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