PENAMPANG, Oct 14 — The spirit of unity in diversity has been practised for a long time by Sabahans and the “Malaysian Family” concept is clearly evident in Ariffin Ahmad, who provides free COVID-19 sanitisation services to people regardless of background.
Civil servant Ariffin, 43, diligently provides the service to mosques, surau, premises and community centres regardless of religion and beliefs because this diversity is what makes Sabah unique.
He was inspired to provide free sanitisation work around the Kota Kinabalu district when he first decided to help sanitise the house of a friend who was COVID-19 positive in June, last year.
“Last year, the movement was quite limited. However, from September this year, things started to pick up and I began sanitising mosques and surau around the Kota Kinabalu, Penampang and Putatan districts.
“So far, I have provided free sanitisation services to almost 30 mosques and surau but there are no houses of worship yet because most of them are not open and still online,” he told Bernama.
He said he himself would carry out the sanitisation work after working hours or on weekends, and he even allocated a little of his monthly salary to buy equipment and disinfectant fluids. Apart from that, he also donated sanitisation machines to several surau and religious schools that have been identified as needing these equipment.
Ariffin said the initiative was taken to facilitate mosque and surau worshipers to perform their “ibadah” as well as to help the government’s efforts to maintain compliance with the standard operating procedures (SOP) set.
Source: BERNAMA News Agency