The public have been reminded not to believe a short messaging service (SMS) being circulated that there will be tsunamis this month or in January.

Deputy Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Kong Cho Ha said people should only rely on information from government agencies such as his ministry or the meteorological department.

"I have not received the SMS yet but sometimes the SMS is abused by unscrupulous individuals. It is true that since the earthquake and tsunami tragedy on Dec 26 (last year), people are aware and cautious of the possibility of it happening around here.

"Whether tsunamis will happen again or not is difficult to predict because we can predict weather quite accurately but we cannot predict earthquakes," he was quoted as saying by Bernama .

He was speaking to reporters after officiating the national seminar on E-Malaysia development organised by Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM).

Kong said the public must be responsible and not create any unnecessary panic over this matter.

According to him, the tsunami early warning system will be installed as scheduled and is expected to be completed by the end of this year.

"Since the Dec 26 earthquake, our meteorological department has fixed a new system which enables it to inform the public about earthquakes via the SMS," he said.

'9.5 magnitude'

UKM vice-chancellor for research and innovation, Prof Dr Ibrahim Komo, who was also present at the event said that he had received a SMS on the tsunami.

"I received two SMS two or three weeks ago about an earthquake with a 9.5 magnitude. If such an earthquake happens and people can see the magnitude, it is wrong because we need at least several hours to calculate the magnitude from various aspects.

"The second SMS is bout it (earthquake) happening either next week or two weeks from now. From scientific and technological aspects, nobody can predict an earthquake. So if you can't predict earthquakes, you can't predict tsunamis," he said.

In view of this, he said such messages were false and the public should not believe them.

In last year's incident, the giant waves killed more than 200,000 people with Indonesia and Sri Lanka being the worst hit.

The waves had also claimed about 40 lives in Malaysia.