Johor has consistently expressed the desire for a full reopening of the Malaysia-Singapore borders.

Reduce time and cost for Covid-19 testing at borders

Johor assemblyman S. Ramakrishnan has now urged the Johor state government to set up a taskforce to review the opening of the borders.

According to The Star, Ramakrishnan said the focus should be to reduce the time period and cost of Covid-19 standard of procedures (SOP) when crossing the border.

He suggested having laboratory testing facilities at the entrance to receive faster results and proposed providing subsidies for the cost of testing.

100,000 Malaysians may lose their jobs

The head of government for the state of Johor, Hasni Mohammad, had previously said that the Johor state government was not capable of finding employment for 100,000 Malaysians who may lose their jobs due to the prolonged closure.

Hasni added that the current unemployment rate in Johor was already at a record high of 18 per cent, with 35,000 people jobless.

Tourism Malaysia's director-general, Musa Yusof, also recently discussed the possibility of travel bubbles between their immediate ASEAN neighbours in an interview with RTM's Bicara Naratif.

Musa said that in terms of tourism, they should see some "movement by the first quarter of the next year", such as green travel bubbles.

Ramakrishnan himself disagreed with having the Federal Government to handle when the borders might reopen. According to The Star, he expressed the view that "the state government did not show any urgency in opening the border much earlier"

Malaysia's MCO to last till Dec. 31, 2020

Hasni has previously urged Malaysia's federal government to speed up the process.

He met with Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin to discuss the matter, and had also submitted working papersand standard operating procedures (SOPs) to Malaysia's foreign ministry.

On Sep. 11, Malaysia's Health Minister Adham Baba said that the country will assess the recovery movement control order (MCO)period over the next four months to determine if it would be possible to open borders with Singapore fully.

As of September 2020, Malaysia's MCO period will last until the end of the year, Dec. 31, 2020.

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Top photo from Getty Images.