It’s safe to say that no one, except maybe North Korea, is an expert when it comes to nationwide lockdowns, and understandably so. Measures such as this are almost always a last resort and as such, it’s hardly surprising that we’ve not exactly hit the ground running here.

The governments announcement of a two-week movement control order brought with it interstate travel restrictions, which is completely understandable, given that the curbing of mobility is key in containing the virus.

When addressing the restrictions, the Inspector-general of police (IGP) Tan Sri Abdul Hamid Bador stated that those who wish to travel out of state will require permission from the police, with there being documents to be presented and applications to be filled and all. At this point, he probably wishes he hadn’t said that.

In an ironic twist, the one thing that was supposed to deter people from gathering ended up being the one reason that troves of people got together. Police stations were swamped with concerned Malaysians last night, all eager to fill up the application forms and get their documentation sorted out so they can travel outstation.

It got so bad to the point where they had no choice but to withdraw the interstate travel restriction.

“In relation to that, we retracted the restriction, and people can now carry on with their journeys safely, and prudently tonight. No restriction will be imposed on them (travelling) until a new decision is made after a meeting about this matter tomorrow (March 18),”

Tan Sri Abdul Hamid Bador

While those travelling within states will be able to do so without any restrictions for now, a new decision is expected to be made later today regarding the matter.

It’s almost incomprehensible how the police didn’t think that this would happen though. I mean, what did they expect will happen? That no one would show up to apply for travel approval? Now, I know what you’re thinking.. why didn’t they make the application form available online? Well, apparently they did. It’s just that the site crashed due to the sheer amount of queries.

Hopefully this doesn’t deter PDRM from utilizing it’s online portal and instead reinforces the need for a stronger back-end to deal with the massive influx of traffic to the site. It’s also rather worrying that so many people turned up to gather knowing very well that there’s a pandemic out there.

Remember people, isolating yourself may not sound like the most fun thing to do, but it sure as hell beats being dead.