KUALA LUMPUR: Economy Minister Rafizi Ramli has described the criticism from UMNO Supreme Council member Datuk Dr Mohd Puad Zarkashi on the Central Database Hub (PADU) as his personal view and it will not affect PADU registration.
He said any change (made by the government) usually faces opposition, but as the government, objectivity should be maintained from the perspective of many stakeholders.
If I were to provide a perspective from a very noisy political figure, it would be Puad Zarkashi.
“Puad Zarkashi, even if Malaysia were to be rich, he would still disagree with me because I raised the 1MDB issue when he was the Director-General of the Special Affairs Department (JASA), and he lost in the subsequent election, then he was ousted from the government.
“So it is personal, if you look at the four noisy ones, they are political figures making noise because of personal matters, but that does not hinder PADU registration,“ he told reporters after the pre-launch of Acara Perdana KL20 at Parliament today.
He said this in response to Mohd Puad’s criticism of him, who had alleged that the PADU system was a failure and that Rafizi should take responsibility for it.
Rafizi said that in the past week, 300,000 to 400,000 individuals registered with PADU every day, and his perspective is that those who are making noise have the right to do so.
“If he says he is not confident because of data security issues, we have presented since Jan 2, until now, even though there have been times when there were two million (hacking) attempts per week, there has still been no leak.
“We have explained that all data is encrypted, even if it leaks, it is encrypted, they need to decrypt the data. He never asked whether the private companies to which he gave e-wallets were encrypted or not.
“So that’s why I think while I can entertain, we should not lose focus because PADU is a very important component of several major government reforms, not only covering targeted subsidies, but there are many other reforms, especially those involving GOVTECH,“ he said.
He said that as of today, about 8.5 million people have registered with PADU, and he expects it to reach 10 million by March 31.
Regarding the issue of PADU data security, he said that data through the PADU system is placed under the Official Secrets Act (OSA).
“As for data security, comments should be reasonable because on the one hand, we give data to everyone, even to buy movie tickets, we give data, online shopping also give data, and those data are protected under the Personal Data Protection Act which is not as strict as OSA so far, and it does not have strict liability like OSA, even though the data given to the government is data under OSA.
“So I think it’s okay to have concerns, but let that perspective be a fair perspective so that we don’t derail what is essentially a national mission and PADU as a key component towards all this,“ he said.
He said that the second phase of PADU registration may be opened after registration and verification of information in the system are completed by March 31.
“There are issues, for example, where spouses do not agree to be the head of the household. We will take note so that when we reopen PADU registration, maybe towards the end of the year or a few months after this, to address the issues that arise.
“It’s true that there are children who say their parents don’t want to register but they want to register, if not they might miss out. However, I think in terms of missing out because the data is already there, even if those parents don’t register, we will most probably be able to identify households that really need assistance.
“It’s just a bit of a long story when they haven’t registered yet and we want to give them money, we have to contact them to ask them to register to get information on bank accounts and so on,“ he said. –Bernama