PADU: Internet coverage, population distribution among challenges faced by Sarawak DOSM

KUCHING: Internet access in rural areas and the population distribution in Sarawak are among the challenges faced by the state Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM) teams, to ensure that residents in the state are registered in the Central Database Hub (PADU) system.

State DOSM director Dayang Rozana Abang Hassan said that taking into account the area of Sarawak, which is the largest state in Malaysia, the department plans to coordinate with community leaders to act as agents for the residents of their respective areas, to register all the information at the Digital Economy Centre (PEDi) or PADU portal.

“We are also coordinating with penghulu, village heads and chiefs for the community to promote and publicise and ask the villagers to register at the PADU portal because we want to encourage them to register themselves.

“For the past few weeks, state DOSM officials focused on the locations of the PEDi, because we want to encourage people to come and register on the public portal, and if that doesn’t work, we will guide them directly at the PEDi,” she said when contacted by Bernama.

Dayang Rozana said those aged 18 and above should be given proper information about the benefits of registering for PADU, to enable them to update household information and individual profiles in the system.

Therefore, she said DOSM officers have been stationed at 40 counters, involving 31 PEDi in Sarawak, and nine state DOSM offices, starting from Jan 2 to Jan 8 to help the public understand the importance of the system.

“Sarawak has a total of 133 PEDi and as we lack members to cover all PEDi, we take turns and try to cover all 133 PEDi within a month, based on certain dates,” she said.

Today is the third day since the launch of PADU, and she said that thus far, those who attended the PEDi consisted of housewives and the elderly, and the number was expected to increase during the weekend.

She said that other plans to ensure PADU registration is a success include working with district offices and local authorities (PBT), in addition to creating a ‘flying squad’, which is more concentrated in targeted areas, especially in the interior.

“For the ‘flying squad’ we will provide facilities such as strong Internet coverage, so we will bring Starlink and open a counter for residents, but the locations will be identified later, after discussions with the district offices and PBTs on the most suitable locations to establish the ‘flying squad’,” she said, adding that the ‘flying squad’ personnel will be mobilised by the DOSM headquarters.

PADU was developed through the internal expertise of the Ministry of Economy, DOSM and the Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU), with the cooperation and support of various ministries, agencies and state governments. -Bernama