Fomema Fear Factor

Malay Mail: The Government is said to be concerned with certain aspects of Fomema's operations it deemed ‘sensitive’, from a national security standpoint, now that its parent, Pantai Holdings Bhd, is run by foreign concerns.
Sources said Fomema, as a concessionaire responsible for medical examinations of all foreign workers in Malaysia, is considered a high-security operation.
The company deals with sensitive information related to the legal foreign workforce and has on-line links with several government agencies, especially the Immigration Department.
This concern was heightened last week after the new owners instructed its auditor from Singapore to go through the books and the entire operations of Fomema, and another subsidiary, Pantai Medivest Sdn Bhd.
Fomema was expected to give the auditor “complete access to sensitive and critical information of the Malaysian healthcare policies and strategies”.
Among others, Fomema has been asked to furnish details on the number of workers tested and the tests carried out on them since 2004, and for it to furnish a listing of all sub-contracting agreements.
It was also asked if the Government had made any queries in changes of shareholding, and for Fomema to furnish the relevant correspondence on this.
Singapore’s Parkway Holdings Ltd in September bought 31 per cent in Pantai, which gives it effective control of Malaysia’s largest private healthcare provider, including Fomema and Medivest.
Fomema was set up in 1997 upon being awarded concession by the Government of Malaysia to carry out the monitoring and supervision of the medical examinations of foreign workers under the annual mandatory health-screening programme in Malaysia. Chief among its contributions is the creation of a centralised database on the foreign workforce for the Government to access.
This includes vital information and vital statistics relating to communicable diseases to facilitate immediate counter-action and prevention plans.
While the latest figures could not be immediately ascertained, Fomema screened 700,000 foreign foreign workers throughout the country in 2003.
Its operations involve 3,300 panel doctors nationwide.
Medivest, meanwhile, is the concessionaire responsible for strategic medical services and policies for the southern region.
It handles 22 government hospitals, most of which are in Johor, and linked to a centralised database that amalgamates information on all government hospitals.