The curious cases of ‘disappearing’ vaccine appointments

 

One complainant said the appointment for his 79-year-old father at the Sunway Pyramid Convention Centre vaccination centre was cancelled at the last minute. (Bernama pic)

PETALING JAYA: Malaysians have taken to social media to air their frustration over last-minute changes to Covid-19 vaccine appointments on their MySejahtera application.

Most of these cases seemed to involve dependents of the social media users, with claims of appointments disappearing or dates changed.

Netizens also complained that contacting the Covid-19 Vaccine Supply Access Guarantee Special Committee (JKJAV) was of no use with no one answering calls to the hotline or responding to direct messages on Twitter.

Twitter user @sirsazly said his 79-year-old father in Shah Alam had been given an appointment for his first dose on June 4 at the Sunway Pyramid Convention Centre vaccination centre.

However, upon checking later in the evening, the appointment had disappeared. “Back to square one,” he lamented.

Another user, @nagaperak1606, said his father was given an appointment on May 31 at noon, adding that he had to go all the way from Serendah, Selangor, to downtown Kuala Lumpur.

“The moment we reached WTCKL, we opened the MySejahtera app and found the date had been changed to June 26,” he posted.

@annesalmah was in the same predicament, saying the app had given her grandmother an appointment for June 6 yesterday but it had disappeared today.

“When I called JKJAV, they didn’t answer. When I messaged (on Twitter), they didn’t reply,” she said, ending the post with crying emojis.

A few days ago, Syahredzan Johan, political secretary to DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang, had posted on Twitter that his aunt, who lives in Johor, had been given a vaccination appointment in Subang Jaya.

In an update today, he said his aunt was given a new appointment for this Friday, but still in Selangor at Sunway Pyramid Convention Centre.

“My cousin decided to just bring my aunt to Sunway for the vaccine. Suddenly, when he checked (the app) again, the appointment had disappeared,” he posted.

His tweet today prompted others to vent their own frustrations and disappointments, with some taking jibes at the reported RM70 million allocated for the national Covid-19 immunisation programme’s (PICK) data integration and appointment system.

FMT has reached out to the science, technology and innovation ministry for comment. - FMT