Overcome congestion at passport issuing offices

GEORGETOWN - The Malaysian Immigration Department (JIM) has identified 21 passport issuing offices that are facing extraordinary congestion during operations especially in the Klang Valley.

Home Minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail said to overcome the problem, the government decided to extend the service operations including opening the offices on weekends.

He said the extraordinary congestion happened following a sudden increase in new passport applications which was four times higher throughout the post-Covid-19 pandemic period.

“Since the end of the movement control order, applications for Malaysian passports increased up to four times which led to severe congestion especially at passport issuing offices in the Klang Valley.

"We recieved a total of 2.8 million passport applications during that period and the congestion caused anxiety to the community... So some mechanisms will be taken to overcome the problem," he said after attending the "Penerapan Nilai-Nilai Murni and Iftar KDN Madani" ceremony, here, today.

Also present was Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Acryl Sani Abdullah Sani.

Saifuddin said besides extending the period of the operations, the Immigration Department will also initiate a pilot project by taking a few steps to reduce congestion.

He said among the other mechanisms were for several passport issuing offices to become a passport collection location only after applications were made online.

Besides that, he said the department will also replace the existing printers at passport issuing offices with high-capacity ones.

“At the moment, we are still using the printers that could print 450 passports a day and after this, it would be replace with a new one which could print over 1,000 passports a day.

“There is room for improvement in terms of printers, but it needs to be looked into in detail before implementing it,” he said.