By Massita Ahmad
SINGAPORE, Nov 27 (NNN-Bernama) — The rather “extraordinarily” long queues outside the Malaysian High Commission (MHC) compound at Jervois Road here have been a common sight since last month.
Photographs of the long queues were shared on social media sites. According to MHC, the thousands of people lining up there are Malaysians working in the republic who have been told to claim their renewed travel documents or passports.
Due to strict border closure measures, they were not able to return to Malaysia to renew their passports and this responsibility has now almost entirely been shifted to MHC’s Immigration section.
The long lines are not the result of any disruption in the system although the section, with its eight staff and two printers, only has one-third of the capacity of an Immigration office located at any Urban Transformation Centre (UTC) in Malaysia.
With its limited resources, the section could only process about 120 passports a day, hence the long queues. In fact, its staff have been working 12 hours a day to process the increasing number of applications for passport renewals, especially after Singapore’s circuit breaker measures – which were implemented to curb transmission of COVID-19 – ended in June.
MORE STAFF
To help ease the workload at MHC’s Immigration section, four UTC Immigration staff who are skilled in handling high volumes were “imported” from Malaysia for three months until December.
It is understood that in just two weeks after their arrival, the section was able to increase passport submissions by 400 to 800 a day and in October alone, 10,000 submissions were made.
Apart from mobilising the four UTC staff, 75 per cent of the section’s passport printing work is being carried out at the Johor Immigration office with deliveries taking place twice a week. All passport submissions are done at the MHC office here.
For submission of the renewed passports, Johor Customs manpower has been roped in to help to arrange the dates and send emails to the applicants concerned.
This has to be done manually as the MHC’s Immigration section does not have the online appointment system used by the Immigration offices in Malaysia which allows the public to choose their own date to collect their renewed passports.
Meanwhile, as of early November, the Immigration section had about 90,000 emails (from Malaysians who had submitted applications to renew their passports) that were still pending. The staff has to reply to every single email even though some applicants are known to send more than one email each. The section’s email capacity has been enhanced to enable it to receive hundreds of thousands of emails.
The passport renewal application process has to be done online in keeping with the physical distancing measures implemented by the host government.
NEW WORK PROCESS
The backlog of online applications since September has reached 29,000 and the Immigration section is confident of clearing it by the end of this year.
Commenting on this, Acting High Commissioner Muhammad Radzi Jamaludin told Bernama the effects of COVID-19 had demanded a new work process that has never been implemented, including in Malaysia.
“Although the lines are long, all of them waiting there will, in the end, have their problem solved. The Immigration Department is trying to ensure that the passports are handed over to them before the expiry of their work permits so that their jobs are not affected.
“The idea is to save (their) jobs. One passport, one job, one breadwinner, one family we can take care of,” he said.
He said if its passport surrender rate had been retained at the usual 120 a day, “tens of thousands of Malaysians (working in Singapore) would have lost their jobs, including permanent residents”.
PHYSICAL DISTANCING
Said Muhammad Radzi: “We are doing an impossible job now and it’s like this every day. At the UTC, the highest number of (passport) submissions is 400 a day and this usually happens at the end of the year.
“But here we are doing 800 (a day) with only one-third of the staff who work one shift and not even a quarter of the (printing) machines (available at the UTC).”
According to Muhammad Radzi, during the first 10 months of this year, the total number of passport submissions had reached 50,000, which was double last year’s total submissions.
He also said that 1,500 applicants did not turn up on the appointed day to claim their passports and added that they faced the risk of their documents being disposed of after three months.
MHC has also been facing challenges in terms of ensuring physical distancing among the people waiting in the long queues.
“We have been warned by the local authorities and received complaints from our neighbours. But we can’t reduce the submission rate even to 300 a day to shorten the line. If we do this, many will lose their jobs.”
Bernama observed that it took less than a minute for a person, after their number is called, to collect the passport at one of the four dedicated counters in the Immigration section here.
“We have to match the appointment to collect the passport with the back end (administrative section), If the back and front ends don’t communicate, we cannot do that kind of speed,” Muhammad Radzi added.
Edited by Rema Nambiar
— NNN-BERNAMA
