PUTRAJAYA: The Finance Ministry has given assurances that improvements are continuously being made to the Sumbangan Asas Rahmah (Sara) system to handle rising user traffic, particularly during long weekends and in the lead-up to 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 yesterday.
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 enhanced the system and boosted its capacity 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.”
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 on Sept 1.
“This proves the system remains strong despite disruptions at several terminals and shops.”
Johan added that the ministry would 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.
Several supermarkets had also suggested additional measures, such as limiting the number of active terminals to reduce simultaneous transactions.
Johan reiterated that the long queues and transaction failures experienced by Sara recipients on Aug 31 were due to the MyKasih system being unable to cope with a sudden surge in demand.
He added that there were no issues involving MyKad scanning, terminals, scanners, or supermarket operations, as all staff were trained to use the system.
He said telecommunication connections and telco access were not affected.
“The issue lies at the MyKasih system and server level in terms of transaction capacity.”
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, faced technical problems at supermarkets nationwide.
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 recently.
In a statement yesterday, the Finance Ministry said transactions under the Sara aid programme hit RM110mil in just two days, with more than 1.7 million recipients making purchases nationwide.
It said MyKasih’s system capacity was enhanced, which enabled 20% more transactions to be processed on the second day.
However, congestion was still reported at some hypermarkets in urban areas during peak hours between 1pm and 2.30pm.
“To manage the situation, MyKasih personnel were stationed at hypermarkets to resolve issues and assist traders,” the ministry said, Bernama reported.
It also advised the public to shop outside peak hours, particularly in the mornings on weekdays, to ensure smoother transactions.
The one-off RM100 Sara credit channelled directly to recipients’ MyKad is valid until Dec 31 and can be used at more than 7,300 registered retail outlets nationwide.
