60 MINUTES FOR M?SIAN PASSPORT RENEWAL IN LABUAN

60 MINUTES FOR M'SIAN PASSPORT RENEWAL IN LABUAN

KOTA KINABALU  -  Imagine submitting your application for a passport renewal at 10am and getting the document an hour later.

Sixty minutes.

That is the target set by the Immigration Department for counters nationwide dealing with the renewal applications, The Star reported.

The Labuan office has already achieved this objective and Immigration Director-General Raja Azahar Raja Abdul Manap said it would take "some time"  for the rest of the country to have this express service.

"This will be done in stages as it would require the upgrading of our equipment,"  he told reporters after launching the country's first one-hour-delivery of international passport and non-stop counter services at the Labuan immigration office on Tuesday.

The non-stop counter services at the Labuan immigration office would operate daily from 8am to 5pm including during the lunch hour.

Raja Azahar said the one-hour passport renewal service begins from the time the document holder makes his payment.

"Our system is on-line with the National Registration Department and as long as there is no fault with the system, the one hour promise will be kept,"       he said, adding that previously the passport renewal service took a day to process.

Raja Azahar said fast renewal service was not only for Labuan islanders but also Malaysians from Sabah, Sarawak and the peninsular as well as those working in Brunei.

Apart from improving the department?s efficiency, the one hour  renewal service could serve as a draw for more visitors to the island, he added.

He said the one-hour service in Labuan for Sabahans and Sarawakians was for passport  renewals and not for new applications or for replacement of lost or damaged documents.

Such applications would take about a month to be processed, as Labuan immigration officials would need to refer to the counterparts in the respective states.

On the non-stop counter service, he said it was only to receive applications for passports, visas and foreign workers pass and did not apply to the administrative and enforcement sections.