KUALA LUMPUR: After more than 5,000 employees of Top Glove came down with Covid-19, including one death, another glove-making giant, Hartalega Holdings Bhd, has now confirmed that 35 of its employees tested positive for the virus.
Twenty of the cases are at the Bestari Jaya operations and 15 at the Next Generation Integrated Glove Manufacturing Complex in Sepang.
In a statement today, it said the affected employees were currently under medical care at a government healthcare facility, while all primary contacts over the past 14 days have been identified and placed under quarantine. They will undergo subsequent testing before being permitted to return to work.
“Some production lines have temporarily shut down, with estimated capacity loss to be less that 0.5% of annual output,” it said.
Furthermore, Hartalega said a thorough disinfection of all areas where the affected individuals were present had also been carried out by a third-party professional service provider.
The group said a total of 8,772 personnel, including outsourced vendors such as security personnel and canteen operators, were tested between Dec 7 and Dec 10, in line with the directive from the National Security Council for all foreign workers to undergo testing.
Chief executive officer Kuan Mun Leong said the stringent measures have enabled the group to record a significantly low positive rate of only 0.4% of all its employees.
“While it is unfortunate that we have positive cases among our employees, we are encouraged that good living conditions and high standards of our workers’ accommodation, which surpass required standards, have allowed us to contain the number of cases,” he said.
He added that the group would continue to review and improve its Covid-19 prevention measures and is looking into implementing a periodical Antigen Rapid Test Kits testing for all employees going forward. – FMT