Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah, the state tourism, creative industry and performing arts minister, said those who “don’t need it” should not be made to divulge their personal information in such a database.
“If Padu is meant to help the poor, then let only the poor fill up the forms (for registration). Let whoever feels like they are in need (of government assistance) submit their details (to Padu).
“But you (economy ministry) shouldn’t go across the board (and make) everybody fill up the forms,” he told a press conference after an event in Kuching today.
Karim also questioned the need for Padu given that there are other existing databases, such as eKasih.
He raised concerns over data privacy after an individual’s personal and financial information is entered into the system.
He claimed that people could be “exposed” once their information was stored in the database.
Karim said the Sarawak government had expressed its reservations on the Padu initiative at a Cabinet meeting.
“For Sarawak, we asked for modifications to be done to fulfil the state’s needs,” he said.
He also called for the ministry to convince those living in PAS-led states to register for Padu first as he was aware of “problems” with the level of registration in those areas.
“If you can ensure Padu’s success in those states, then you can come and see us,” he said.
On March 11, economy minister Rafizi Ramli was reported to have said there were 28 distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks to the Padu system on the first and second days of its launch on Jan 2.
“However, there have been no more such cyber attacks from Jan 4 until now,” he said, adding that Padu also successfully withstood 32.86 million attacks involving intrusion prevention system (IPS) protection.
According to Rafizi, the Padu system and database were safe from any threat from outside the country, given its use of geofencing and only allowing access to people inside Malaysia to make changes to the database.
On Wednesday, deputy economy minister Hanifah Hajar Taib said that while registration with Padu is not obligatory, it is encouraged for citizens aged 18 and above.
She said that as of March 19, nearly 6.03 million, or 27.4%, of citizens and permanent residents had registered with the system.