One of the biggest changes the pandemic brought along, is how much the government actually communicates with us. Pre-covid, how often would you get a text from the government? Never.
Now, we receive at least one to two text messages from the government a day. Some might say, that’s a little too much.
Ledang MP, Syed Ibrahim Syed Noh, recently took to Parliament to ask the government to cut down on the texting, as he believes that certain messages have political agendas and that the cost of the messages would be an unreasonable expenditure.
He requested for the government to clarify on the “SMS Blast” phenomena.
“Many members of the public and myself see that we, quite often, receive these SMS Blasts that come from, sometimes their code is MKN, sometimes it’s MCMC, code KKMM and the latest is GOV.”
“I would like to ask, if for example, these messages are messages that are important, like when Covid-19 first broke out we received messages about the Covid-19 situation, about certain restrictions, I don’t see a problem in that. We support it. But I see, when it includes messages that are strong in propaganda, the latest example would be the ‘three values of cabinet ministers’. What is the use of this to the people?” he asked.
He went on to share that the purpose of these messages are to share factual information with the public and asked the government to clarify the costs that go into sending out these SMS Blasts.
“And please do clarify if this approach has any benefits and good impact on the people, as I am worried that the cost is high, especially when, for example we change the SMS Blast code number to MKN, GOV, KKMM and so forth. This has costs, there is value to it. So when it is sent to millions of people, that is a cost that is very high and concerning.” he added.
And there are indeed, some messages that may be a little unnecessary. For instance, the people should know to wash and sanitise their hands without having to be constantly reminded by the government.
How do you feel about receiving these constant messages from the authorities? Let us know in the comment section and stay tuned for more updates on the costing of these SMSes.
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