With the extension of the Movement Control Order (MCO) to 28 April, the Malaysian government has decided to allow some businesses to resume. Unfortunately, the website where business owners apply to do so was overwhelmed by heavy traffic. As a result, the website was temporarily shut down earlier in the day.
In a statement shared on Twitter, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) said that the application site was shut down between 2PM and 4PM earlier. This was to reconfigure the application system so that only companies that are allowed to operate get access.
Within the first two hours of the site’s operation beginning 9AM, over 176000 users attempted to access the site. The ministry said this was way beyond the number of companies in the approved sectors.
Untuk makluman, sistem permohonan untuk syarikat beroperasi akan ditangguhkan sementara bermula jam 2.00 petang dan akan kembali berfungsi pada jam 4.00 petang melalui pautan https://t.co/SNaoAajy7Z@AzminAli @limbanhong @lha_miti pic.twitter.com/3VrFpCLwG6
— MITI Malaysia (@MITIMalaysia) April 13, 2020
Based on the responses to the tweet, it looks like a fair number of business owners still had trouble getting access immediately after the site went back online. For what it’s worth, we got to the application page at the time of writing.
In a way, this is similar to when the government announced financial aid for citizens in the form of the Bantuan Prihatin Nasional (BPN). As it was before, it’s only natural that business owners are clamouring to apply. After all, the MCO extension has understandably put smaller companies under immense pressure.
(Source: MITI Malaysia / Twitter. Image: MITI)
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