With the rising concerns on the ownership of the MySejahtera application, certain sectors believe that the app which we heavily rely on in our daily lives may have “outlived its usefulness”.
Recently, the Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) said that MySejahtera may have “outlived its usefulness” as a contact tracing application.
In a statement, MMA president Dr Koh Kar Chai said that the app’s scanning feature for the purpose of contact tracing is no longer as useful as it was in the earlier phases of the pandemic.
He also called for an end to the use of the MySejahtera app for contact tracing purposes, saying that it may have now outlived its usefulness.
“As we are transitioning towards an endemic phase of Covid-19, it is time that we consider a halt to the scanning of MySejahtera each time we enter a premise, especially when we complete the phase of transition.”
“The use of Mysejahtera allowed contact tracing to be done during the height of the pandemic, a feat that would have been impossible without the MySejahtera app. However, it may have outlived its usefulness as a contact tracing app,” he explained.
Koh said that the app can be put to better use as it has been adopted by a large number of the population from the young to the old across the country.
He also stressed however that the contact tracing feature should still be preserved as it is not known when the next pandemic will turn up.
Furthermore, he explained that it can be adapted to be used as a personal health record as it is already linked to individual identities of users and is non-transferable.
Decreasing usage
In a report by Berita Harian, the MySejahtera app witnessed a reduction of 26% or 6.3 million in the check-in rate since the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) raised the issue of the app’s ownership.
The drop in the number of check-ins was recorded after the PAC report raised questions on the safety of user data and transparency in the development of the app.
The health ministry’s GitHub portal recorded 24,358,225 check-ins on Friday (25 March). This dropped to 20,106,659 on Saturday, 19,279,238 on Sunday and 18,038,569 on Monday, which was the lowest since 22 August last year.
Do you think it’s about time we move on from using MySejahtera in our daily lives? Let us know in the comments.
Also read: MySejahtera Has Been Sold To A Private Company? Here’s What You Need To Know
