YOURSAY | Endemic Covid phase – end of MySejahtera?

YOURSAY | ‘Imagine how much hospital equipment we could buy with RM300m.’

Govt will not pay anything close to RM300m for MySejahtera - KJ

KINIGUIDE | What PAC uncovered about MySejahtera

Appum: Was the MySejahtera app a CSR (corporate social responsibility) project now turned into a cash cow?

In appreciation of it being CSR project, the government could just pay RM1 as a formality to take over the product. The government may even pay the developer RM1 million if it deems it fit.

If that is not acceptable to the developer, then let the government carry out an open competition for local developers (or local plus foreign) to come out with a similar system and offer a RM5 million prize for the successful candidate.

Unless this is a planned rip-off, as we don't have details of the agreement, this CSR project might just be a “committed sure return” enterprise.

ManOnTheStreet: Simple solution, Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin. We are already transitioning into the endemic phase of Covid-19. Do away with the need to daily scan with MySejahtera.

Hospital admissions are well under control. Just transfer the vaccination data over to a simple static platform (MyVaccine) for record purposes. It should also provide online retrieval of vaccination certificates and verification. It would maybe cost RM3 to RM5 million?

The daily scanning accumulates huge data storage costs. Not to mention, the cost of analytics if that is even applicable (almost all developed countries have abandoned contact tracing and enforced confinement in the Omnicron endemic phase).

We need to stop this habit of doing things just for the sake of doing them. It’s sheer wastage.

What effect does our daily scanning have on the endemic phase of Covid-19 anyway? Khairy, you have said it yourself, it’s time for people to take responsibility in our bid to decrease transmission.

At present, MySejahtera sends us a warning of close contact - it’s up to us to test and isolate ourselves anyway. Indeed, we don’t need an app to tell us that.

Imagine how much hospital equipment we could buy with RM300 million. Imagine how many more lives we could save with that money.

BluePanther4725: Yes, as we enter the endemic stage of Covid-19, we should stop using the MySejahtera app altogether. Contact tracing is not useful or necessary and the government should stop tracking us.

It causes us inconvenience and it’s an invasion of our privacy. Who knows, our data could be hacked by third parties.

Before the pandemic, there is no MySejahtera contact tracing and we should revert to this as Covid-19 has become endemic.

MerdekaMerdekaMerdeka: Khairy, RM299 million can be “not anything close to RM300 million”. Seriously, it’s all subject to interpretation. Or ‘pusing’ (spin) if you will.

I would think of “far lower” as being RM3 million, or even RM30 million.

But putting all this screw-up aside, isn’t there anyone in the government who looks at the terms and conditions when a deal is struck for any business transaction? This is all so nonsensical.

LimeGoat2442: There is no formal contract in place? No clauses on vendor obligations, confidentiality, warranties, indemnities, dispute resolution, etc? If the company decides to close shop or sell the software and data to someone else, then what happens?

This is a ticking timebomb and the longer this drags on, the more the government will be held to ransom and the only option is to use money to wiggle its way out.

I wonder why it took the ministry so long to address this issue.

Salvage Malaysia: Why can’t the government just enter into a normal business transaction whereby they appoint a developer to develop the software and the final product is owned by the government? That would hardly cost a few million ringgit at most.

The more convoluted the deal becomes, the more fishy it looks.

GrayBird0902: I did a Covid-19 test and dutifully tried to register my negative result on MySejahtera.

Then I discovered that the form asked me all sorts of irrelevant questions about my voting constituency. I decided I am not going to give such information to MySejahtera.

Something fishy is going on there. Why does it need my voting constituency information?

Ringgit: The opposition is right on this - this could be a potential national security issue if it gets out of hand, specifically data privacy, ownership, accessibility and accountability.

The people’s data can be exposed and exploited for various purposes, thus this must be contained immediately.

Please hire an independent IT auditor to do the data security and risk assessment as soon as possible.

MS: What stinks to high heaven is the way this scandal-in-the-making is being unravelled. Making it more suspicious are the names of the characters now emerging from the depths - at least two of them have a sordid past.

More details may be discovered soon, just like 1MDB. And there will be more denials before the faecal matter hits the fan.

You just cannot expect these people to do anything straight. Every process is an opportunity to make something on the side.

ADE007: This is daylight robbery. Singapore, Australia, New Zealand wouldn’t have paid that much and they have similar or even better apps.

It looks like corruption has been accepted as a perk in Malaysia. - Mkini