Recently, the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) smoking ban in all eateries and has been in full swing since 1 January. The ban covers all restaurants and hawker stalls in Malaysia, including all air-conditioned and open-air restaurants, coffee shops, hawker centers, and street stalls.
Unlike at some airports and cities around the world, currently, there are no designated smoking areas, thus smokers are allowed to carry out their habit at least three meters (10 feet) away from eateries.
“However, an enforcement action in these six months will focus on educating the public and restaurant owners so that they are aware of the ruling and hopefully, they will respect the ban. After six months, there will be patrols to check on the smoking ban and the public can call the ministry hotline if they see people breaking the law.”
However, it’s almost impossible to get the 5,000 strong enforcement officers to conduct the inspections at various locations throughout the country. Thus, the Ministry of Health (MoH) is also seeking assistance from members of the public to further increase the effectiveness of the ban. Among the way that they can lend their hands is by making a complaint directly to the MoH via WhatsApp.
Based on the instructions released by MoH, the WhatsApp report must include the name and address of the restaurant as well as the date and time that the offense took place. Additionally, the report must include the picture of the smoker while he or she is smoking within the premise.
Making a report is one part of the process. A user who makes the report wanted to know whether their reports are handled accordingly. On the other hand, MoH also wanted to know how effective is the escalation process from acknowledging to closing the case.
A Malaysian Startup company, FAVORIOT, offers a citizen engagement solution called Favorsense that is easily customizable for MOH or any related scenarios. It comprised of several modules – a mobile app that enables any citizen to make a report (it will include the ability to take photo and auto-geo-tagged the location), administrator system that manages the reports and provide proper escalation to the right parties, a Field Force app that receives jobs assigned to them and a management dashboard to monitor the performance of the process.
Favorsense can be easily customizable for any Government Agencies, Municipals, Campuses, Shopping Malls, Housing Developers, Housing Residence, Condominiums, Facility Management, Occupational Safety and Health and many others.
Any interested parties can contact info@favoriot.com
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