Staff At Several Klang Valley PPVs Alleged To Be Abusing Patient Info To Harass Women
"It sucks that we girls have to go through this," one of the women said.
By Jananey Ramachandran — 15 Jul 2021, 03:51 PM
Several women have been sharing that staff at vaccination centres (PPVs) in Klang Valley have been misusing their information during registration to send them unsolicited texts
This comes after a Twitter user reported that his 18-year-old sister was harassed by a World Trade Centre Kuala Lumpur (WTCKL) PPV staff.
According to Malaysiakini, the user called for the Special Committee for Ensuring Access to COVID-19 Vaccine Supply (JKJAV) to take action after the PPV staff contacted his sister on Tuesday, 13 July.
The user mentioned that his sister's phone number was misused and it is a violation of privacy.
"Women should not have to face these kinds of unwanted advances," he tweeted.
SAYS tried to reach out to the user but have not received a comment at the time of publishing.
After his tweet went viral, more women then came forward with allegations of being harassed at PPVs, one of them by the same WTCKL staff
The woman told SAYS that on Sunday, 11 July, around 10.15am, her sister requested help from a Malaysian Armed Forces (ATM) volunteer when she got lost in the basement parking while trying to exit WTCKL.
While guiding her to the entrance, the ATM volunteer asked when is her second dose appointment, to which she said she does not know yet. However, the ATM volunteer was persistent and asked her to open her MySejahtera app.
She showed her COVID-19 information page, which displayed that her second appointment information was still unavailable. To which, he then asked to check her profile page.
The woman said that her sister realised something was off when the ATM volunteer the suddenly held his phone like he was taking a picture of her phone screen. She quickly closed the app and told him that she knew how to exit then.
The woman told SAYS that because of the way he was acting, her sister already knew that the ATM volunteer might have noted her personal information. So once she received the following text, she blocked the number right away.
Another woman told SAYS that she also received similar unsolicited messages but from a staff at the Ideal Convention Centre (IDCC) PPV in Shah Alam
She said that on 28 May, around 5pm, a man who was working at the registration counter checked her MySejahtera details and read her phone number out loud as if he was trying to memorise it.
The woman told SAYS she expected him to contact her because of his weird behaviour at the registration counter. She immediately blocked the number.
"I didn't have the guts to do so (report) and this happened in May. But after seeing another tweet about the volunteers abusing their authority, I decided to do the same thing," she said about coming forward.
She added that an IDCC staff had contacted her after seeing her tweet and assured her that the incident has been reported to their supervisor and action has been taken on the man.
"I hope people are aware of this. Blocking him alone won't stop him [from] continuing to do this to other girls. They could be sexual predators too and we'd never know. I hope they learn their lesson," she said.
"It sucks that we girls have to go through this."
According to Malaysiakini, another woman reported that the same man had harassed her on 31 May. The man used similar tactics of checking her MySejahtera details at the registration counter to take down her number.
JKJAV responded that that have taken note of the WTCKL PPV incident and disciplinary action has been taken against the ATM volunteer by his agency
In the response that was tweeted yesterday, 14 July, JKJAV also added that the agency has a zero-tolerance policy for the behaviour that has been reported.
SAYS has reached out to JKJAV about the ongoing issue but have yet to receive a reply.
SAYS also reached out to ATM and was directed to their tweet yesterday, in which they said that they will conduct an internal investigation and will provide an update once it is done.
Harassment at PPVs are an ongoing issue, as last month, Malaysiakini reported of a similar case where a PPV doctor who had consulted a woman on her vaccine jab later sent her unsolicited texts.
