The company involved in the so-called 1Malaysia Email project was yesterday awarded a traffic summonses collection agent contract by the Royal Malaysia Police.

In an announcement to Bursa Malaysia today, the company, Tricubes Bhd, said it would be making collections through automated teller machines (ATM) and provide traffic summonses information through cellular phone text message service, reported Bernama .

Following the announcement, Tricubes' share price saw a sharp leap of 57 percent from RM0.165 yesterday to RM0.260 today, making it one of the top five traded stocks.

Tricubes is best known for its appointment by the federal government for a project that was once dubbed the 1Malaysia Email project.

azlan After the idea was heavily panned by critics, it was renamed the MyEmail service.

The idea behind it was to provide all Malaysians with a secure email account for correspondences and monetary transactions with government agencies.

It was argued that this method would save the government a lot of money because each correspondence can cost up to RM1.

Launched by Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak on April 19, the project is supposed to cost RM50 million but the premier later clarified that the initiative was purely privately funded.

It was later confirmed that Tricubes would be getting a RM0.50 cut from every email through its service.

For the company, which is facing financial woes , it was argued that the email project was to be a “ lifeline ”.

Critics argue that Tricubes would stand to make a killing from the deal and that the government should consider other options as email services are mostly free.

                    

Although Tricubes had forecasted a 5.4 million take up rate by year end, as of early October, the sign up rate has been dismal, with only 3,000 people having signed up for MyEmail accounts.