The all pervasive MySejahtera application may not be free of charge eventually. There are many questions over who gets the contract to manage the application - which logs personal details, health status and whereabouts of 38 million users.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org
Details on the deal would not have come to light had it not been for the Public Accounts Committee, who questioned the Finance Ministry and Health Ministry (MOH) on March 8.
Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said the MOH owns the rights to the MySejahtera smartphone application.
However, a written reply by the Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry (Mosti) and MOH to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) suggested that things are a bit more complicated.
The MOH has formed a “MySejahtera Steering Committee”, chaired by Khairy, to decide on the management and direction of MySejahtera while considering the cost-benefit of a “complete” takeover of the application. While the Government may own the MySejahtera base application, they may not own some additional modules.
KPISoft Sdn Bhd was engaged by the Health Ministry to develop MySejahtera as a form of corporate social responsibility (CSR) from March 27, 2020, until March 31, 2021. Putrajaya was not charged for this period.
According to the Mosti/MOH reply to the PAC, Putrajaya decided that KPISoft Sdn Bhd has to be paid from April 1, 2021, because of all the additional components added to MySejahtera which was not in the original 2020 agreement.
The deputy secretary at the Finance Ministry's Government Procurement Division, told the PAC that on Nov 26 last year, Putrajaya greenlit the MOH’s decision to appoint MYSJ Sdn Bhd to manage MySejahtera. This procurement was to be done without an open tender process.
The PAC chairperson pointed out during the proceedings that KPISoft’s directors were Rekhta Mani and Yogaraj Thuraisingam.
As for MYSJ, the directors are Heah Kok Boon, Raveenderan Ramamoothie, Anuar Rozhan, Liew Kee Sin, Shahril Shamsuddin and Megat Najmuddin Megat Khas. Anuar is the brother to former Astro Malaysia Holdings Bhd CEO Rohana Rozhan, while Shahril is best known for being the Sapura Energy CEO and shareholder.
Megat Najmuddin was a long-time Umno member who joined Bersatu in 2018. Currently, he chairs Bersatu’s disciplinary board.
MYSJ is a brand new company incorporated in September 2020. As for KPISoft, they have been around since 2005 and are based out of Singapore, with a Malaysian presence. Their Malaysian outfit changed its name to Entomo Malaysia in May 2020.
According to a report by Code Blue, MySJ Sdn Bhd is Entomo Malaysia’s special purpose vehicle created for a public-private partnership (PPP) project.
According to Code Blue, citing court documents, Entomo Malaysia had proposed to the Government in Dec 2020 to pay them to expand the scope of MySejahtera beyond the Covid-19 pandemic.
The report said Entomo Malaysia proposed that MySejahtera can be used to track other vaccination distribution, manage other infectious diseases, conduct predictive analysis and integrate with other existing government health systems.
Entomo Malaysia proposed that the PPP contract would last 15 years and cost the government about RM138.9 million annually.
In a turn of events, a new report by CodeBlue claims that there’s actually already been a deal between Entomo Malaysia Sdn Bhd (formerly known as KPISoft Malaysia) and MySJ Sdn Bhd, with the latter agreeing to pay Entomo RM338.6 million for MySejahtera’s intellectual property and software license.
The license agreement saw MySJ paying Entomo RM38.6 million for the last quarter of 2020 as a transfer of IP fee and a service fee, with further sums to be paid to Entomo annually for a total of RM338.6 million. According to Code Blue, MySJ would be paying Entomo RM60 million each year from 2021 onwards, with the last payment happening on 1 March 2025. This payment covers the first 24 million users of the MySejahtera app only though, with users exceeding 1% from 24 million users to cost MySJ a further RM1.50 per user per annum. Yesterday, Khairy had stated that there are over 38 million registered users on MySejahtera. This means that MySJ could end up forking another RM21 million per year on top of the agreed sum between them and Entomo.
This deal has not been finalised.
Transparency is the real issue. Is the Government purchasing MySejahtera? At what price? RM338m? Why no procurement tender? Why the denial by the Minister of Health? Will the data be eventually be sold to third parties? Security of data? Can the Government do a “White Paper” on this? Why can’t we be transparent and follow a tender process? Is doing a CSR the gateway to an exclusive contract?
References:
What PAC uncovered about MySejahtera, 28 March 2022 (www.malaysiakini.com)
Report: MySJ Sdn Bhd agreed to pay RM388.6 million for MySejahtera IP and software license, Raymond Saw, 28 March 2022 (https://soyacincau.com)
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