KUALA LUMPUR, February 24 – Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) will enforce the ‘Kill Switch’ policy to all banking institutions to enable users to take immediate action to freeze their accounts including ATM cards from being used in the event of suspicious activity. The Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim said, the move aims to deal with online fraud crimes or ‘scams’ which are getting worse in this country. For the year 2022 alone, more than 25,000 crimes were recorded with a loss of RM850 million.
“Although the government has established the National Scam Response Center (NSRC), there is no uniform policy in dealing with this issue as each banking institution issues its own guidelines. To strengthen the role of the NSRC, a total of RM10 million is provided for operating grants,” he said when presenting Malaysia’s Budget 2023 in the Dewan Rakyat on Friday. Meanwhile, Anwar said, government services need to smartly adapt technology and digitization to reduce bureaucratic red tape.
According to him, a new transfer initiative is also needed to enable the implementation of the best public service for the people. A Special Task Force on Agency Reform (STAR) chaired by the Chief Secretary has been established to spearhead this desire. Funds will be provided for the implementation of pilot projects by the ministry that can improve government services to the people under STAR. The successful ministry will be given full allocation for the implementation of projects at the national level,” he said.
Anwar, who is also a Member of Parliament for Tambun, said the Malaysian Administration Modernization and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) under the Prime Minister’s Department had taken a strategic step by upgrading the MyGovCloud service. According to him, the move aims to ensure that cloud computing services in the public sector work more effectively. This service is able to function in a hybrid way by also combining ‘public cloud’ services by a ‘cloud service provider’ appointed by the government.
