KUALA LUMPUR: The government needs to come up with full disclosure and transparency on the MySejahtera deal, economists said, after reports surfaced that the Covid-19 contact tracing digital application's dispute may risk the private health-related data of millions of Malaysians.
According to a report by CodeBlue, there had been a deal between Entomo Malaysia Sdn Bhd (formerly known as KPISoft Malaysia Sdn Bhd) and MySJ Sdn Bhd, with the latter agreeing to pay Entomo RM338.6 million for MySejahtera's intellectual property and software licence.
The payment was described as the aggregate fees for the transfer of intellectual property of the app and the licensing fees for the software.
Putra Business School associate professor Dr Ahmed Razman Abdul Latif said the government needed to explain its contract agreement with Entomo.
It also must properly explain who exactly owns the software, who file for its protection and thus licenced it, and who holds the user data collected by the software.
"The government also needs to explain and justify why the ownership of the software needs to be transferred to MySJ Sdn Bhd and whether the company will transfer the ownership of data.
"There are lots of speculation and guessing games at the moment, which will cause unhappiness and trust issues among the public, where they might be ending boycotting the use of MySejahtera due to privacy issues.
"This will hamper the government intention to monitor the outbreak of Covid-19, which can cause uncontrollable outbreak everywhere in the country, thus putting more strain on the health services," he told the New Straits Times yesterday.
Economist Tan Sri Ramon Navaratnam questioned why the government could not carry on implementing a system that has worked so well in contact tracing for more than two years.
"Can people trust the government more, at this stage, than they would trust a company? And this (MySejahtera) contains personal and confidential data.
"I would opt for the government to continue, and if there are any weaknesses in the app, tweak and improve them. If it ain't broken, why fixed it," he said.
Ramon said this could also lead to the suspicion of cronyism.
"That is why this issue must be debated and discussed in Parliament and let the people decide.
"The government must be fully transparent with this deal," he added.
A quick check on its website showed that Entomo has four regional headquarters in Singapore, the US, the United Arab Emirates and Vienna.
Entomo's chairman is Dr Finian Tan, who is listed as a venture capitalist and entrepreneur.
He was the founder and current chairman of Vickers Venture Partners, an international venture capital firm with a presence in Singapore, Shanghai, New York, Hong Kong, San Diego, San Francisco and Kuala Lumpur.
Entomo's founder and group chief executive officer is Ravee Ramamoothie, who has been with the company for 17 years.
Meanwhile, those who sit on MySJ's board of directors reportedly included big names such as former Sapura Energy Bhd chief executive officer Tan Sri Shahril Shamsuddin, Sime Darby Plantation Bhd non-executive chairman Tan Sri Megat Najmuddin Megat Khas, Eco World Development Group Bhd executive chairman Tan Sri Liew Kee Sin and its chief financial officer Datuk Heah Kok Boon.