The woman, who declined to be named, said she had accompanied her grandmother, in her 80s, to the PPV for her first dose early last month.

“I saw with my own eyes that there was no ‘pushing in’ (of the plunger) after the needle was inserted,” the woman said in a statement issued by Api-Api assemblywoman Christina Liew.

“I saw some bubbles when the worker pulled the syringe slightly before pulling out the needle. So I raised my voice to say there was no injection of vaccine at all.

“Instead of showing the empty syringe to me as evidence, the worker challenged me instead by saying, ‘didn’t I inject? Didn’t I inject? I did’.”

The woman claimed this was after the worker had bent down to discard the syringe in the clinical waste bin.

“I was not satisfied and demanded to see the doctor on duty to seek clarification. Due to my persistence, a doctor checked the contents in the bin in my presence to detect if there was any syringe (filled with vaccine) but couldn’t find any.

“My family decided to leave it at that because we did not have any proof,” she said.

The woman added that her grandmother did not experience any side effects – not even pain where she had been injected – after the vaccination.

Following media reports of “empty syringe” jabs, Liew said the government should consider enacting a law to classify “the heartless and irresponsible act” of administering such shots a criminal offence.

“It should be deemed a crime for anyone to knowingly and deliberately administer empty syringe vaccine shots. The Covid-19 pandemic is a matter of life and death,” the Tawau MP and former deputy chief minister said.

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