8 hours to renew our international passports

Federal Territory Day Public Holiday Wed 1/2/2012. Kajang Immigration Department

I and my wife spent more than 8 hours from 8.30am to 5.00pm at the packed immigration office building in Kajang to renew our expiring international passports.

For the first 4 hours we were standing on our feet waiting in a long queue outside the entrance to get into the processing area for our applications to be checked and accepted. And the second 4 hours were spent sitting down on the benches waiting for the various stages of our applications to be processed. By the time we stood before the checking counter our legs had turned numb and stiff and our knees were hurting from the four hours of standing.

The immigration officers were doing their work professionally though.

The long processing and waiting time was caused by just too many people either applying for new passports or renewing expired ones. On this day, I believe that there were more than 400 applicants because my number was 1328 and my wife's 1335. This means that there were already more than 300 people in front of us when we joined the long queue at 8.30am. After more than 400 numbers were given out the officers had to bar the late comers from coming in.

The big crowd was due to the public holiday in KL. KL folks and Selangor people like myself who work in KL took advantage of the holiday in KL to renew their expiring passports in the various state immigration offices outside KL.