KUALA LANGAT: Three neighbourhoods in the Kuala Langat district have been placed under the Semi Enhanced Movement Control Order (SEMCO) from yesterday.
Kuala Langat police chief Superintendent Azizan Tukiman said the SEMCO was enforced at Taman Langat Utama, Taman Langat Murni 1 and Taman Langat Murni 2, with a population of about 9,000 in total.
"SEMCO has been imposed at these three housing areas following government's instruction and the gazetted period is from yesterday (June 2) to June 16.
"This is following the detection of a new Covid-19 cluster involving workers of a cleaning company by the Health Ministry. All residents here are now subjected to Covid-19 tests by the ministry.
"They are now being called to come out of their houses to undergo the tests at the stations set up by the ministry," Azizan told the New Straits Times today.
He said 70 per cent of the residents there were locals while the rest were foreigners.
Azizan added that barbed wires had been put surrounding the three neighbourhoods since midnight.
He said some 600 police personnel, including the Armed Forces, had been deployed to guard the areas.
Under SEMCO, residents are still allowed to move freely, unlike the Enhanced Movement Control Order (EMCO) where movements are restricted and food would be delivered to them.
On May 29, Health director-general Datuk Noor Hisham Abdullah said the cluster was detected after 24 positive cases were recorded among Bangladeshi workers, after a cleaning company decided to conduct Covid-19 screening among its staff.
Meanwhile, a resident in the area, Muhammad Noor Hidayat Kamruddin, 31, was at work when he was notified by his family to return home to attend to the screening conducted by the Health Ministry.
"We were aware that a group of foreign workers had tested positive for Covid-19 but thought the situation was under control.
"However, I was shocked when I was informed that barbed wire fencing had been installed around our neighbourhood followed by the presence of police and the army patrolling the area," the private sector worker said when met earlier.
Another resident Siti Halimah Hassim, 37, said her family was waiting for their turn to undergo the Covid-19 screening.
"My four children and I were supposed to attend the screening this morning.
"However, our turn was changed to the evening session since there were many residents here who needed to attend the screening in the morning," she said.
Siti Halimah said she learned that residents who have yet to be tested were still allowed to leave and enter the residential areas if they have written permission to do so.
"However, once a resident has been screened, we are not allowed to leave home," she said.
Both residential areas were previously declared as a Covid-19 yellow zone after not recording any new positive cases for almost three weeks.
However, that changed when the new cluster was detected involving the Bangladeshi workers.
Twenty of the foreign workers who tested positive for Covid-19 were staying at a hostel in Kuala Langat.
The remaining foreign workers infected by the virus were staying at an apartment in Nilai, Negri Sembilan.