PUTRAJAYA, Dec 29 — Putrajaya said today that Malaysians will be given three months until March 31 next year to update and validate their information with the country’s Central Database System (Padu).

Economy Minister Rafizi Ramli said that the public can begin to update their information after the launch of Padu on Tuesday next week, January 2.

"There’s no action taken if you don’t update. Some had asked if they could choose to opt out, yes they could,” he told the press at his ministry here.

"But the government will only use the information that is readily available in all the government databases to gauge the household profile and the eligibility of them receiving the targeted subsidy.”

However, he said the public must not "be mad at the government” if they do not receive the targeted subsidies by opting out of the database.

Rafizi said the first phase of Padu will focus on the collection of information and data from industries and agencies under the federal government.

Padu integrates microdata from various government departments and agencies to create profiles of individuals and households.

When asked how will the government ensure all data has been updated, Rafizi said all data is already available but the government has to ensure that all available data is up to date.

"We want to ensure that in case, for example, there will be a few unique cases such as data not being the latest data — for instance, data of an address there could have been different address information from two different agencies; or data is not available in the government departments, for instance, those who are categorised under the informal sector.

"[Workers in the informal sector] don’t have any salary. So we have about 12 million employees in the workforce, nine million are from the formal sector while three million are from the informal sector," he explained.

"So these are those in the workforce that we want to give them some room to update their income information — even though in the government’s database there is existing data, there is complete data, we just need to validate these data,” he added.

To encourage the public to update their information with Padu, service providers such as Touch ‘n Go will offer complementary near-field communication-enabled (NFC) cards for the first 3,000 who register or update their data with Padu. Retailers such as the Mydin hypermarket chain will also offer discounts for these early birds.