The Malaysian Immigration Department will be forming a special team to speed up approval for renewals and applications of passports, said Immigration director-general Datuk Seri Khairul Dzaimee Daud.
According to Malay Mail, Dzaimee said the department is in the midst of testing the project and will soon implement it in the Klang Valley.
“We started in Johor by placing 8 immigration officers from other states there and their task is to only give approvals and nothing else.”
“We could start this as soon as next week as we are still in the midst of finding the officers we can place in Klang Valley,” said Dzaimee.
Over the last 2 months, there were several complaints from Malaysians about having to wait long hours just to get a waiting number, then wait another few hours to be served at immigration depots throughout the country.
Meanwhile, the queue in Klang Valley was one of the worst with citizens flooding social media with videos and images of the long queue. Many also complained about the poor service and having to make several trips to get their passports renewed.
Dzaimee identified one of the issues was taking new pictures for the passport, where he suggested that those aged 30 and above use their existing picture to speed up the process.
“We’re studying the feasibility of allowing Malaysians aged above 30 to use the same picture in the system without the need to upload a new one,” said Dzaimee.
“As for renewals through post we still don’t allow it as the passports are high value items.”
“That’s why sometimes it takes longer to renew as we need to authenticate these documents,” he added.
On Thursday (9 June), Dzaimee was quoted as saying by Bernama that passport applications and renewals had gone up by 65%, thus leading to a congestion at Immigration offices, especially in the Klang Valley.
Despite the operating hours at six Immigration offices having been extended to 10 pm to cater to the increase in applications, the situation remained the same.
These are the Immigration Department offices in Putrajaya, Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Johor, Negri Sembilan and Melaka.
