PETALING JAYA: Malaysians are the majority shareholders in Entomo Pte Ltd, a Singapore-based company which owns the software used to develop the MySejahtera mobile app, health minister Khairy Jamaluddin said today.
MySejahtera was cast in the spotlight last week when the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) questioned its proposed takeover by MySJ Sdn Bhd from Entomo Malaysia (formerly known as KPISoft Malaysia Sdn Bhd), the company that developed it.
Appearing before the Dewan Negara following concerns raised by the PAC about personal data privacy and the app’s ownership, Khairy once again assured the public that the app itself is owned by the government.
“I want to explain a bit about the company (Entomo), but I don’t want to say too much as they are the ones who should be doing it,” he said.
“Entomo, which is based in Singapore, was formerly known as KPISoft. The majority shareholding in the company is held by Malaysians.
“They chose to be based in Singapore as, like other Malaysian tech companies, they find it easier to get investors in Singapore,” he said, citing the example of e-hailing and food delivery company, Grab.
According to a report in health news portal CodeBlue earlier this week, Entomo has 28 shareholders in total.
They comprise eight corporate shareholders – five of which are Singaporean, two from the US and one Japanese – as well as 20 individual shareholders – eight from Japan, Singapore (4), Malaysia (3), India (3), US (1), and Indonesia (1).
FMT reached out to Khairy’s aide for comment, as based on the report, only three of the 28 shareholders are Malaysians.
In response, the aide said the three Malaysian shareholders accounted for more than 50% of the shares.
Meanwhile, Khairy’s explanation led to an interjection from senator Razali Idrus, who said the health minister had just given the upper house a “new exposé”.
“We want to ask the Dewan Negara and the minister to order companies whose majority shareholders are Malaysians to be based in Malaysia. We have Cyberjaya which is really great and known across the world,” Razali said.
“This is something that will raise a lot of questions among netizens.”
Khairy agreed with Razali.
Data stored in Malaysia
Prior to that, Khairy assured the Dewan Negara that all data obtained through the MySejahtera app is owned by the government and is secure, adding that it is uploaded to a cloud server network on a daily basis.
He added that the server was based at the AIMS Data Centre in Kuala Lumpur and can only be accessed by health ministry officials solely for MySejahtera purposes.
“All data and information obtained through MySejahtera is the property of the government, and its security and confidentiality are guaranteed,” Khairy said.
Previously, Lembah Pantai MP Fahmi Fadzil had questioned whether MySejahtera data was stored with Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing firm owned by China’s Alibaba Group.
Khairy and finance minister Tengku Zafrul Aziz are among those who will be called up by the PAC to explain the app’s development and procurement in proceedings which are expected to start in mid-April.