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It's definitely good to know that the relevant authorities have managed to listen out and act accordingly (and not make fuss with cyleow) to this matter. Definitely a step in the right direction. Kudos to the authorities.

Hopefully, it doesn't end here, and that over time, workflows are streamlined and optimized and that processes can be made more efficient. It takes time, but hope that the direction will be there, and not fizzle out soon after.

Perhaps, there's hope after all for our beloved country.

P/S - I'm still waiting for my invitation for satay open house at our embassy in Tokyo if there is one this coming Merdeka.. LOL

Reading and knowing it, but not doing anything about it ... shocking!

Reading about the long delay in the processing and actually taking action to do something about it is really missing the target that is in front of you by a "million" miles. To me it just show how inept the bureacracy is and how insensitive the officer handling the matter is.

Like it or not, the public sector is just doing a plain public striptease with their declaration of their inefficiency.

Somehow the declaration that we are taking a step in the right direction and that there is hope indicate just how far down the "drain" our public sector services is, in this case the immigration office.

This does not mean that there is no good services around, in fact there are. It is just not consistent.

Instead of an honest appraisal of our current shortcomings and seriously making effort to rectify them we have a lot of feelgood declaration that everything is alright.

Sheez!

Haha, shocking.

It took me a total of 5 days to Renew my 10 year British passport in Kuala Lumpur.

i think we should give credits to those public servants who really have a desire to serve and to do their job well. they confirm the teachings of many management & quality gurus that most people are not inherently lazy and they do want to be proud of the jobs they do. and if they continue to serve to their best abilities despite getting no thanks from their customers and the demotivating system they work in, they deserve our applauds,
it is very clear we have very very serious system problems in our public sector.
while it does seem that the top leadership has a genuine desire to improve things. the ball might have been dropped some where down the middle management.
in order to eradicate the problem, the gov really need to review the way they hire and promote people. clearly, one that is based on seniority, race, creed, etc. hasn’t brought us too far. perhaps it's time to try one that's based on merits, achievements, and willingness to change and improve for all malaysians.
we have one of the biggest public sectors in asia. it is also practically the biggest, and arguably the only effective "trade union" on malaysia. so it will take a lot of political wills, major balls power from the very top to effect any change.
pak lah, do you have what it takes? ya we know, you are between some rocks and a hard place. if you fear doing the right thing will affect support from the gov servants during the next election. let just say, the people on the other side is also getting really impatient already.

Now we know that someone in Pak Lah office is readng your blog daily like me reading your blog few months after you had became famous by NST, thanks to Mr.Kalimullah.

Quote : Zulkefli also stressed that he is there "TO HELP FELLOW MALAYSIANS".

Typical Malaysia civil servants. They all think they are "helping" the public rather than DOING THEIR DUTY.

I think the 3rd world mentality thing will stay for a long long time.

Making passports expensive and difficult to get doesn't reduce people losing them and shouldn't be used as a source of income for the govt. Nowadays they should see that every citizen who travels or stays overseas in a flattened world is actually a moving asset, listening outpost, and goodwill ambassador for the country. Citizen mobility is also so important to expand minds and change mindsets.

So, why not take another step - make passports cheaper and easier to get? It requires a mindset change of the govt itself first: that the passport is NOT a privilege awarded by a govt to its citizens, but an automatic right of the citizens to have one.

Double the pages, double the expiry period and halve the price of passports. Let that be the first thing on the to-do list of those in Putrajaya who'll reading this (tomorrow morning).

Second, shorten the process by the principle of exception. All applications, whether be for passports or what not, will only fill in exceptions - data changes. Then the processing will only be on the changes, since the rest should still be in the computer. In fact the new passport can be batched over every week without waiting for the old passport to be returned first; if the latter is already in the hand of the resident immigration officer in NZ, a representative of Putrajaya, then it should be considered 'received' and there should be no hesitation to send over the new one. So why ask the client to courier?

Lastly, what exactly do they do every hour of a working day in a foreign affairs office overseas? Do they pick up market opportunities for SMEs, help students find flats, monitor exchange rates..what?

Do they query why so much money was already spent on consultants for sports complex in London, and how that project looks eminently likely to be..ramped/rumped/railed through? Despite hospitals not having enough medicine, roofs fall on teachers, students not having proper PE classes?

Form, substance, mindset, process. Take your pick, Putrajaya.

Different case in Malaysia Embassy in london,uk

you'll able to receive your passport same day if your are staying out of london,I went to the embassy to apply back in April and was told the passport was "low in stock" .Therefore i'll have to wait 1 MONTH instead of 1 day to get my new passport.

So,if london can get it done in 1 day or 1 month.how can they managed to delay it till 3 months??

Well I'm still waiting for my email reply from the Aussie branch, umm from last year? or 2 years back, lol can't remember. Oh well, doesn't really matter now, but still. Guess they're too busy organising greetings with the students by unpopular keris politicians trying to garner some future supporters every single year...

I would like to add to Vothemans comments. On 7th August 2006, we too had to renew our passports at London High Comm. A pleasant surprise was in store for us (my wife, two kids and I). Not only was the attending lady so ever polite and informative, we got our passports the same day and its with chip, meaning we can use the auto gates at KLIA. Although it was pretty crowded that day (apparently Monday is not a good day to renew passports, plus its summer holidays) everyone was attended to. I recalled a Malaysian who had unfortunately lost his passports and wallet to picked pockets. He too got his passport. Not only that, the canteen serves Malaysian goodies like nasi lemak, mee goreng and kueh kueh (only problem its UK prices...lah!) Kudos to staff at London High Comm. Berkhidmat Untuk Negara!

I would like to add to Vothemans comments. On 7th August 2006, we too had to renew our passports at London High Comm. A pleasant surprise was in store for us (my wife, two kids and I). Not only was the attending lady so ever polite and informative, we got our passports the same day and its with chip, meaning we can use the auto gates at KLIA. Although it was pretty crowded that day (apparently Monday is not a good day to renew passports, plus its summer holidays) everyone was attended to. I recalled a Malaysian who had unfortunately lost his passports and wallet to picked pockets. He too got his passport. Not only that, the canteen serves Malaysian goodies like nasi lemak, mee goreng and kueh kueh (only problem its UK prices...lah!) Kudos to staff at London High Comm. Berkhidmat Untuk Negara!

Maybe some of our comments had a negative impact! Oh well....

We just want better service, thats all.

malayantiger, you are a very brave man. the last time i told my personal (good) experiences with renewing passports in our high comm in canberra, i got flamed good good. :-P

How many of us has horrible stories to tell when it comes to PUBLIC SERVICES provided by our civil servants?

Condemns >>> praises!!

Surprise - NO

Causaulity - Mental perception

In a net shell these 'little napoleons' think the general citizen own them a living. They are here to 'help' not to 'serve'.

See the difference?

Extend Neil's logic further one can see that these people, whether the head of dept or the general dept workers, cannot think out of the box to solve any problems glaring into their faces.

Most of the time is to take the easy way out. Like increase the application fee of the passport; reduce number of pages to increase the frequency of renewals which lead to 'higher profit' for the dept; without realising the increase workloads & the existing lame attitudes of the workers that will contribute to the long dealy. This long delay actually COSTS more than the dept profit from the fee in real economical situation. Resulting in loss opportunities & higher costs for the general public.

But then how many of these planners can really look that far into the equations?

Short term gains for sense of self-fulfillness. very typical of our civil servants! Examples many too!

In fact if we to look further a field we see the same attitudes happen in most of the corporate world, especially the GLCs.

Losing money -> to increase revenue -> increase sevice charges

Can they ever think like

Losing money -> to think out of the box for change -> to increase revenue -> reduce charges & increase efficiency & reduce overhead

There are many jingos for think out of the box & increase efficiency. They remain jingos - noise to be heard for the moment.

Reduce head count - NO NO its too sensitive.......

Hi

I had just accompanied my sister to the Malaysian Embassy here in Canberra, Australia to renew her passport which is expiring in 2 months time.

We had just entered the embassy just after 2 in the afternoon and there was no one else in there but apparently we were invisble as the few embassy staff were unable to see us standing right infront of the counter. After maybe 5 minutes, one of the staff finally managed to pry his eyes from his workstation to see us waiting at the counter. But according to my sister, this was a good day as she once had to endure a 45 minute wait with no one in front of her.

Anyway after submitting the relevant forms and documents to renew the passport, she was told that it would be ready in 20 weeks or 5 months, a process that would usually take 1 day in Malaysia. Now even if they send back the forms to malaysia i doubt that it would take that long a time to reach Malaysia to be processed. After all once it is in Malaysia , it only takes a day to process right?

The kicker is the staff attending to us was Vietnamese. My sister said she also was once attended by a filipino staff. Now i'm puzzled that malaysia has to employ some people of other nationality to process sensitive documents.

My sister told me that once the staff told her that the machines to produce the machine readble passport was sent the the embassy but the staff were not trained in using the machine, that is the reason all the passport application has to be sent back to good old Malaysia.

Malaysia Boleh and have a happy 49th Merdeka!

Cheers

Eksk

eksk
It's the policy of Wisma Putra to hire citizens of host country first, then citizens of other nations and lastly if no qualified candidates, Malaysians residing in host coutry. So that is why you see Vietnamese and Filipinos working in many Malaysian Embassies and High Commission. It's Anak Kera disusukan Anak Sendiri Mati Kebuloran policy. Strange but true