KUALA LUMPUR (March 5): Claims of a low number of registrations and information updates in the Central Database Hub (Padu) system due to data integrity issues are inaccurate, said Economy Minister Mohd Rafizi Ramli.

He said this is because Padu contains data integrated from various sources, including federal and state governments, agencies and statutory bodies, with all the information profiles of individuals and households.

"All the data is already there. What we want is for it to be updated when it is implemented, so that it does not arise why I did not get [help], why I am like that, and so on.

"If the data in Padu is considered inaccurate, all the data in the government system from the federal, state, Zakat Board and so on is also inaccurate, because the information comes from these data," he said in a question-and-answer session in the Dewan Rakyat on Tuesday.

He was replying a supplementary question by R Yuneswaran (Pakatan Harapan-Segamat), who wanted to know the government's measures to ensure more Malaysians register and update information in the Padu system following concerns about data security.

Rafizi said the number of those who had registered and updated their information in the Padu system cannot be compared with the number of Malaysians as a whole, but rather the number of households should be taken into account.

"The concern is that current registrations (as of Feb 25) are 3.79 million. We always look at several perspectives — that is, we see how many have been updated compared to the total number of citizens of 30 million people.

"When we compare the number of updates, it cannot be compared with 30 million. It should be compared with the number of households. The current household is 7.9 million, and since singles and people without families are counted as one household, the number of households is expected to rise to nine million," he said.

Accordingly, he said his ministry will ensure that as many families and individuals will make full use of the final month (before the end of March 31) to register and update information in the system.

"Some groups feel that they are not eligible for targeted subsidies, and they don't want to update [their information]. Some groups will wait until the last minute until March 31 to register, and some may be in a rush to update after the government announces targeted subsidies.

"But [all this] does not interfere with planning that all household information data must be available by March 31 to enable the government's socio-economic programme to move to the net household disposable income method," he said.

Padu was launched on Jan 2, and is open to the public for updates until March 31, with Phase 2 expected to start from April to June 2024, which will involve the development of algorithms according to use case requirements based on data in Padu.