Malaysia makes more rubber gloves than any other country, and in the spring of 2020 the world was running short. Now the government has apparently eased its partial lockdown so factories can return to full staffing.
Glove makers had warned a month earlier that the lockdown would cause a global shortage. According to a March 27 letter from the Malaysia Rubber Glove Manufacturers Association to its members, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry gave way late in March at a meeting with the group. Factories could go back to full staffing as of April 1. The ministry would not comment on the report.
There were conditions. Companies still had to apply with a complete list of their workers and stagger shifts to keep factories as thinly staffed as possible at any one time. If they did, the letter said, “MITI has agreed … that the companies who have received approval to operate at 50% labor usage can now operate with 100% labor force.”
What the industry says
Denis Low, the association’s president, told VOA the ministry had agreed to let factories run at “optimum,” though it would not discuss staffing levels. Officials feared that other industries might demand the same treatment.
“I would say that the government has given us the opportunity to work at optimum, and by optimum we mean to say that we will be able to supply the 225 billion pieces of gloves which we think the world will need this year,” Low said. For comparison, the factories turned out 187 billion gloves in 2019.
Govindasamy Baskaran, managing director of the large Malaysian glove company Brightway, said use of gloves had “skyrocketed” and some of his foreign customers were already running out. His factories were back at full staff by April 3. “Already there is a shortage everywhere,” he said, “and there have been cases where … the frontliners are working without gloves.”
Jeremy Lim, a global health expert at the National University of Singapore, said most governments and hospitals hold stockpiles of gloves and other protective gear. “But if this crisis goes on for long enough, definitely everyone will start to feel the pain,” he said. Malaysia letting factories run flat out “will be very, very important.”
Pressure from Europe
The European Union had pressed the point days before. In a March 25 letter to Trade Minister Azmin Ali, EU Ambassador Maria Castillo Fernandez wrote that gloves were among the hardest items to source and that the partial lockdown was hobbling global supplies. On Thursday she told VOA the EU welcomed the move, calling Malaysia the world’s largest producer of medical exam gloves.
