SARA: MoF Assures System Improvements To Handle Surge

PUTRAJAYA, Sept 2 (Bernama) -- The Ministry of Finance (MOF) has assured that continuous improvements are being made to the Sumbangan Asas Rahmah (SARA) system to handle rising user traffic, particularly during long weekends and in the lead-up to the Malaysia Day celebrations.

Treasury secretary-general Datuk Johan Mahmood Merican said MyKasih has introduced measures to enhance the system’s capacity and strengthen its daily troubleshooting process to address technical issues.

“Every day, (MyKasih) improves the system’s performance and resolves any problems to ensure it can accommodate the growing number of recipients making purchases at supermarkets,” he said at a media briefing on SARA here today.

Johan said the MyKasih system’s basic capacity, initially set at 5,000 transactions per minute, has been increased to 15,000 transactions per minute to cope with the surge in purchases.

“We enhance the system and boost its capacity daily, to ensure it can handle the high volume of transactions. The system has not crashed and continues to operate smoothly,” he said.

“However, when there is a sudden surge, processing capacity drops and some transactions may take longer or fail to be completed,” he said.

Johan said a total of 895,000 transactions were successfully processed on the first day of SARA’s rollout on Aug 31, and the figure rose to 950,000 transactions yesterday.

“This proves the system remains strong despite disruptions at several terminals and shops,” he said.

Johan added that the ministry will continue making improvements and is open to various options to ensure the system is fully stable and ready for peak demand in the coming weeks.

He said several supermarkets had also suggested additional measures, such as limiting the number of active terminals to reduce simultaneous transactions during sudden surges.

Johan reiterated that the long queues and transaction failures experienced by SARA recipients two days ago were due to the MyKasih system being unable to cope with a sudden surge in demand.

He stressed that there were no issues involving MyKad scanning, terminals, scanners, or supermarket operations, as all staff were trained to use the system. He also confirmed that telecommunications connections and telco access were not affected.

“The issue lies at the MyKasih system and server level in terms of transaction capacity,” he added.

On the implementation of other forms of assistance after SARA, Johan said the government would take greater care to ensure that any new initiative could meet demand while providing sufficient capacity to handle transactions.

He also advised recipients not to rush to redeem the aid, noting that the RM100 credit remains valid until Dec 31.

Previously, it was reported that the one-off RM100 SARA assistance, which began on Aug 31, had faced technical problems at supermarkets nationwide.

Meanwhile, Dialog Corporate Social Responsibility (MyKasih) deputy chairman Jeffrey Gerard Perera said Yayasan MyKasih, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), has long played a role in channelling aid to needy families in collaboration with zakat institutions and state governments.

On its business model, he said Yayasan MyKasih developed a cashless payment system based on MyKad, which has been in operation since 2009 in collaboration with the government, including Bank Negara Malaysia, the National Registration Department (NRD) and the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC).

He said the objective then was to create a cashless financial system using MyKad as the primary instrument, as it is held by all Malaysians and considered secure.

Since its implementation, the number of MyKasih recipients has grown rapidly - from 700,000 SARA beneficiaries in January to 5.4 million in April 2025, before expanding to 22 million recipients recently.

-- BERNAMA