Health Minister YB Khairy Jamaluddin in his Twitter post replied to the allegation that MySejahtera app which is being used by millions of Malaysians being sold together with all the private data to a private company adding that the Ministry nor the Government has sold or has any intention to sell the application to any private entities.
This comes on the back of news reports and press statements made by Opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim who said the MySejahtera app has been sold off to a private company MySJ whose directors were also part of the team that helped develop it. Anwar was raising questions on the secrecy of such a deal and the fate of the personal data of millions of Malaysians that is sitting in the application.
Khairy said on March 26, the cabinet had decided on appointing the Ministry of Health as the sole guardian of the application to be used as a national health service provider. The Minister further added that KPIsoft (developer of MySejahtera app) was never paid by the government throughout the use from 27 March 2020 till 31 March 2021, claiming the company offered the application as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility duty.
Since then, MOH has continued using the MySejahtera app due to its robust and sturdy nature, the app currently supports 38 million user base both citizens and non-citizens with 10 different modules. The Government through the Ministry of Finance in November 2021 had also decided that MOH can conduct direct negotiations on the cost of management and upkeeping the application with the vendor for a total of 2 year contract period.
The Minister adds that all data kept in MySejahtera is under MOH supervision ever since inception, adding that data management will be done through a data management process approved by the Ministry. In this sense, the management and collection of data must adhere to the Disease Control and Prevention Act 1988, Medicine Act 1971 hence the data in MySejahtera cannot be shared with any other Ministries or private entities.
Separately, Khairy said the data from MySejahtera app is uploaded to the cloud network server daily and can only be accessed for the purpose of the application use only.
He hopes the public will continue to use the app, assuring that the Ministry of Health will not allow people’s data to be compromised
