Malaysia Mulls Aadhaar Like System to Avoid Frauds

Malaysia wants to introduce a system like India’s Aadhaar program in its national identification card MyKad to avoid frauds and duplicity in delivering government subsidies and other benefits.

Malaysia’s Human Resources Minister M. Kula Segaran, who visited India last week, told PTI that when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Malaysia in May this year, he had offered Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad collaboration in the areas where India has expertise such as Aadhaar.

Malay Mail said in its report that Kula Segaran led a delegation to India last week which included representatives from Bank Negara Malaysia, Ministry of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Human Resources.

The Indian news agency said that the members of this delegation met with ministers and officials in India to discuss the possibilities of adopting some features of Aadhaar model. It quoted Kula Segaran as saying, “We met UIDAI CEO Ajay Bhushan Pandey… We have identity cards, but with the [introduction of an Aadhaar-like] system, the primary aim is to avoid duplicity of payments and fraud, and to target specific groups.”

He said that the country wants to transfer subsidies to the targeted groups for which linking the bank accounts with the identification system will be beneficial.

“Now, we have fuel subsidy in my country. Everybody gets fuel subsidy. We want to target certain groups and give it to them, not to others. We have different groups like B40—those who earn household income of less than 3,990 Malaysian ringgit,” Kula Segaran told PTI.

He also said these benefits are given to the Malaysian people in the form of a check or cash. Once the bank account gets linked with an identification system, subsidies will be directly transferred to the account of the beneficiary.

When he was asked about the privacy concerns that may come up among Malaysians, he accepted the possibilities of such concerns but also said that in Malaysia, people have been using MyKad since years, which contain their private details.

“You put my ID card number, you will get my details, where I was born, who is my mother, who is my father,” he was quoted as saying.

People in India have been raising privacy related concerns regarding Aadhaar and its linking to various services. In September, the Supreme Court said that Aadhaar program did not fundamentally violate Indians’ privacy rights. However, the apex court also limited the use of the program to the distribution of certain benefits.