No walk-ins for passport renewals at KL's mission
Sudden move comes in wake of long queues at High Commission of Malaysia here
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Long queues outside the High Commission of Malaysia at about 8am last Friday. A sudden move not to accept passport renewal walk-ins resulted in over 400 being turned away yesterday morning.
ST PHOTO: CHONG JUN LIANG
After recent complaints of long queues at its premises, the High Commission of Malaysia in Singapore has reportedly stopped accepting walk-in applicants looking to renew their passports.
The sudden move resulted in more than 400 people being turned away yesterday morning, despite some of them having lined up since midnight, according to Chinese-language newspaper Shin Min Daily News. It was reported last week the diplomatic mission previously had a daily limit of 30 walk-in applicants.
When The Straits Times visited the mission in Jervois Road yesterday evening, a security guard confirmed that from this week, only those with appointments will be let in.
The security guard did not say why the consulate stopped accepting walk-ins, only that this was in response to recent complaints.
Among those caught unawares by the sudden change yesterday was Ms Chin, a permanent resident from Malaysia who declined to give her full name.
She said she started queueing at the mission at about 5am, but was turned away at 9.40am.
This was the second time she had left empty handed. She said she had queued for three hours last Thursday but was later told the system was down.
She took leave to try again yesterday morning. While the queue was shorter compared with last week, she said the officers were much stricter.
She told ST in Mandarin: "Only those with an e-mail from the high commission and those with appointments could go in. There were people whose work permits were expiring and needed a new passport, but they were told that this was not the (high commission's) problem."
Ms Chin, 32, who works in customer service, said she had applied online in January to renew her passport, which expires at the end of the month. She decided to go to the mission last week as she did not hear back from them and she needed a new passport as her firm plans to send her to Macau for training.
She tried to book an appointment online, but there were no slots until May 21, she said.
After being turned away yesterday, Ms Chin said: "The worst part is we are not told exactly how many people are allowed in... If there is a limit, they should tell those in the queue and not let people just wait there."
Malaysia's Immigration Department said last Saturday that action is being taken to resolve the congestion, and eight more officers will be stationed at the mission here from this week to speed things up.
Correction note: An earlier version of this story said that notices posted online and on the front gate of the High Commission of Malaysia had said that the consulate's immigration department would be temporarily closed to walk-in passport applications from March 30 this year until further notice due to Covid-19. This is inaccurate as the notices were for temporary closures that began on March 30 last year. The high commission had resumed walk-in applications for passport renewals in December, according to its Facebook page. We are sorry for the error.
