KUCHING: All industrial workers throughout Sarawak are provided with free COVID-19 vaccines without any charges from the government, the State Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas said today.

He said there had been advertisements made by some companies that any of their workers who wanted to go through the vaccination exercise at vaccination centres (PPV) set up at their premises would need to pay a certain fee.

"I would like to clarify here that the vaccine is provided free by the government (and) at all vaccination centres for industry, the employers are footing the costs for setting up such centre and the service fee for the teams administering the vaccination," he said in a statement.

Uggah, who is also the Sarawak Disaster Management Committee chairman said PPVs especially for industrial workers were necessary to speed up the vaccination exercise for them as there had been many positive cases of COVID-19 in working places had been reported.

He said so far the response from Sarawakians towards the vaccination programme had been encouraging with a total of 855,749 people in the state had been vaccinated to date.

-- BERNAMA