By Norrasyidah Arshad
SHAH ALAM, May 15 — The SELangkah (Langkah Masuk Dengan Selamat) system introduced by the Selangor government is currently adopted in other states as well, says Dato’ Seri Amirudin Shari.
The Selangor Menteri Besar said Kuala Lumpur, Pahang and several other states have utilised the contact tracing initiative, which now has recorded over one million users since it was introduced on May 4.
Some of the business chains outside of Selangor utilising the system include the 7-Eleven convenience store, Al-Ikhsan Sports, Giant Hypermarket, JM Bariani House, F&N Coco-Cola (M) Sdn Bhd, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaves, SP Setia Berhad and Chilli’s.
“We (the state government) don’t want exclusive rights over the initiative as we want to help the Health Ministry in tracing the individuals who may have been infected with the virus,” said Amirudin, who had featured as one of the panellists on the post-Covid-19 discourse aired on Facebook last night.
Penang chief minister Chow Kon Yeow and Kedah Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Mukhriz Mahathir were also among the panellists on the talk show, which was moderated by DAP Socialist Youth (Dapsy) head Howard Lee Chuan How.
Amirudin said that such applications have also been developed in other countries, including Korea and Taiwan, but SELangkah provides a much seamless experience.
“It only requires the scanning of the QR code and we would be able to track those involved if a Covid-19 infection is detected,” he said.
Amirudin pointed out that the application was the brainchild of one of the members of the Selangor Task Force for Covid-19 (STFC), Dr Helmi Zakariah, who has expertise in the field of technology and public health detection.
“We realised that contact tracing is very important when we tried to integrate the existing data analysis to control the pandemic,” said Amirudin, adding that the initiative will not breach data privacy of the users.
“We would like to stress that the application would only require the telephone numbers for contact tracing without leaking personal data.”
SELangkah was introduced for Covid-19 contact tracing to prevent the spread of the virus.
Each individual premise is required to produce its own QR code through the selangkah.mbiselangor.com.my website or selangkah.my, and have it displayed for the visitors to scan.
