KUALA LUMPUR, March 2 — Putrajaya must explain why a private company was contracted to handle the prescription of selected medication to pensioners alongside the national healthcare system, a DAP federal lawmaker demanded today.

Kulai MP Teo Nie Ching claimed that OratisRx Sdn Bhd, which dispenses medication to pensioners under the suddenly-discontinued e-MASS system, was making a profit of 7 per cent to perform a service that could be handled by public hospitals.

"To place such a system under the monopoly of a company making a profit simply by being the middleman reeks of public funds wastage,” she said in a statement today.

Teo said the profits could have been used instead to further fund public healthcare.

The e-MASS system enabled pensioners to get medicines or medical equipment at private hospitals, clinics or pharmacies registered with OratisRx without making any payment.

Pensioners only needed to go directly to those places, call the e-MASS call centre or make orders through the e-MASS portal and have OratisRx deliver the item to them or to the respective hospital.

OratisRx Sdn Bhd, which the government had appointed in 2012 to act as an intermediary between Public Service Department and federal pensioners to provide medicine and medical equipment that are unavailable in government hospitals or clinics, said in a February 27 letter that there was a order by PSD effective February 28 to stop all supplies of medicines and medical equipment to pensioners .

Teo said today that the discontinuation of the e-MASS system without warning meant pensioners, who are on fixed incomes, must now scramble to pay for medication that they need to treat chronic and life-threatening illnesses.