Health minister Khairy Jamaluddin delivers a speech at the book launch of ‘Malaysian Healthcare: Building for Future Excellence Equity and Resilience’ in Kuala Lumpur, March 28, 2022. — Picture by Shafwan Zaidon
KUALA LUMPUR, March 28 — Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin today stressed that the MySejahtera Covid-19 contract tracing mobile application and its data still belongs to the government, despite a previous deal on its intellectual property (IP) and software licence.
Khairy said a court case involving Entomo Malaysia Sdn Bhd (formerly known as KPISoft Malaysia) and MySJ Sdn Bhd which resulted in the latter agreeing to pay the former RM338.6 million has no bearing on the government’s negotiation with the latter over the app.
“The amount they have agreed to with Entomo has nothing to do with the government’s negotiation.
“I can tell you for a fact that the amount that we are negotiating with MySJ is much, much lower than RM300 million. Far lower than RM300 million,” he said when pressed by reporters after the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) book launch here.
“The court case between Entomo and MySJ, that’s something for them to resolve. Nothing to do with the government.
“The government maintains that as far as MySejahtera — the application and also the data inside MySejahtera is owned by the government, and that is the basis of our negotiation with MySJ,” he added, explaining that the negotiations have also not been finalised.
Khairy said that when he was appointed health minister, he decided to ensure that the management of the app falls under the ministry.
This, he said, was due to the lack of a formal contract between KPISoft and the government then, and the effort was part of the company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) programme.
“There was no payment also. When I was appointed as the health minister, I said that we need to regularise this service as they cannot be doing CSR forever, as suddenly, they will ask us to pay and all that.
“So I brought this matter to the Cabinet. I said that we need to have a contract signed together between the government and the company that is operating this platform. That is how the negotiations with KPISoft started,” he said.
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