SARAWAK’S QR-coded wristbands for people under Covid-19 quarantine will be refined to make it easier for the authorities to trace those who discard the devices, said the developer.

Sarawak Multimedia Authority (SMA) general manager Zaidi Razak told The Malaysian Insight that real-time tracking, however, is not viable.

Such “sophisticated” wristbands will cost 10 to 20 times more than the current ones, which are “below RM10”.

“To have a wristband with a GPS tracker like Singapore will be very costly. We’re looking at RM100 to RM200 per piece. Is the state government willing to spend that much?”

An improvement that can be made at no additional cost is to have a unique number, tied to the MyKad number of the person under surveillance, on each wristband.

“So, if the person given the wristband cuts it off, dumps it, and it’s picked up (by someone else), we can easily trace who the wristband was issued to,” said Zaidi.

Currently, an individual given the wristband enters their MyKad number into the system when reporting themselves. The wristband registers their body temperature, but not their whereabouts.

This has led to some people breaching quarantine. In one case, a man who just returned from the peninsula drove to a Sibu market for a bowl of kampua mee. He was caught after posting about it on Facebook.

Sarawak rolled out its wristband at the end of March, making it the first state to have a device to keep track of those under coronavirus surveillance. The wristbands are issued mostly to those undergoing mandatory quarantine upon entering the state.

Wearers are required to report themselves twice a day by scanning the wristband’s QR code.

SMA previously said variations of the system have been deployed in China, South Korea and Hong Kong. – August 28, 2020.