GEORGE TOWN: Gerakan vice-president Datuk Baljit Singh asks if the time has come for Malaysia to do away with Covid-19 contact tracing via MySejahtera as the country heads towards the endemic stage.
Baljit said the fact that news reports have been trending that a private firm was buying over the application was most disturbing.
He added that even more distressing was the resounding silence on the part of the government.
He said the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), during a hearing last Thursday had discovered that private firm - My SJ Sdn Bhd - was appointed by the Health Ministry through direct negotiation after the Cabinet agreed to give up control of the application on Nov 26, last year.
He asked why was there no statement forthcoming from the government on the preservation of data privacy for all Malaysians and visitors on this matter.
"Are we waiting for a breach in data privacy to occur before everyone scrambles with lame statements on this matter?
"Just like our neighbour Singapore's 'TraceTogether' application which was aimed at stopping the spread of Covid-19 through community-driven contact tracing, MySejahtera may have been also useful during the height of the pandemic.
"The digital system which was implemented by the Singapore government was developed by the Government Technology Agency of Singapore in collaboration with the country's health authorities.
"Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin must come clean on the sale of our Covid-19 contact tracing digital application and assure all Malaysians that their private data is secure and not about to be exploited by third parties," he said.
Baljit said equally important was for the glitches on MySejahtera to be addressed and not to confuse and distress the public.
"In the near future, Malaysians will not be fooled again and are more likely to not declare their health status and other vital data," he added.
Over the weekend, netizens called for a boycott of MySejahtera on Twitter, under the hashtag #StopUsingMySejahtera.
Opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim had called on the government to clarify the deal and questioned how the ministry and MySJ Sdn Bhd would preserve the privacy.
Khairy has since clarified that the government did not "sell" the MySejahtera application to any private entity, with the Health Ministry assuring that all data in the app remained under the ministry's supervision.
Khairy also stressed that the MySejahtera data had always been under the ministry's purview ever since the app was rolled out.