(Oct 22): Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s unveiling of the locally developed navigation app TuJu, created by the Malaysian Highway Authority (LLM), as an alternative to Waze for road navigation needs has turned out to be a national embarrassment.
While many support the government’s efforts to protect our national security interests, there should be proper due diligence and stringent testing to ensure that the replacement (TuJu) can adequately match and replace the basic road navigations functions of Waze.
The user feedback so far is that relying on this TuJu device will make the user worse off.
I have received complaints of TuJu’s ineffectiveness and that the government should not make it a compulsory replacement of Waze. Malaysians support replacing Waze applications that endanger security risks concerning information and data on citizens' movements, when it is subject to the laws of the Israeli government, but not an application that is defective at best and at failure at worst.
Clearly the prime minister has been wrongly advised.
Datuk Seri Anwar should also tell the public how much it costs the government to come up with TuJu. The one to be blamed is the person responsible for convincing Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim that TuJu is adequate technologically to replace Waze and this person should be punished. Did the designers of TuJu get expert advice from the professionals from US, Europe, China or Japan?
The prime minister should go back to the drawing board by asking the National Cyber Security Committee (NSC) to come up with a much improved TuJu version which can perform as an adequate replacement of Waze.
How can the NSC be expected to do its job to ward off evolving cyber threats, strengthen the nation's preparedness and digital sovereignty when it cannot even fulfil users’ road navigation needs?
Lim Guan Eng is DAP's adviser and the member of Parliament for Bagan, and a former finance minister.
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