Malaysia’s travel reopening cheer tainted by controversy over Covid-19 contact-tracing app
- Critics say controversy surrounding MySejahtera app, Malaysia’s answer to LeaveHomeSafe, symbolises country’s poor government accountability the last two years
- Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin insisted there is nothing untoward in the entire saga and citizens personal data is secure
After a trying two years of the health crisis, the reopening has been highly anticipated by citizens and officials alike, with Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin taking to social media to welcome foreign arrivals.
At home, however, the government’s critics and some observers said the travel milestone did not mean they would mute their repeated calls for accountability on some of the government’s questionable decisions the last two years.
The current controversy surrounding the MySejahtera app – similar to Singapore’s TraceTogether and Hong Kong’s LeaveHomeSafe – pertains to recent reports by the health news portal CodeBlue that revealed the Malaysian app might not be fully government owned as many were led to believe.
Instead, its proprietor was a Singapore-based company.
Veteran Malaysian political analyst Bridget Welsh said the controversy over the app – spanning procurement, ownership, data privacy and protection, as well as transparency and inadequate oversight, would only serve to add to latent public concerns about the platform.
“It has clearly been botched, the usage figures speak for themselves,” she said, referring to reports MySejahtera check-ins and identified casual contacts fell 26 per cent between March 25 and 29, when the issue became public.
