Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Applications for low-cost passport may hit 1.8 million

The cost-effective international passport has received an overwhelming response from the public that the Immigration Department believes applications will increase to 1.8 million this year.

The department’s director-general Datuk Abdul Rahman Othman said there were 1.2 million applications last year for the RM100 passport, which is valid for two years.

“We attribute the jump to the low cost and value-for-money factor as well as the speedy one-hour processing period,” said Abdul Rahman during a press conference in Pusat Bandar Damansara yesterday.

He said the department had received 913,440 applications for passports from January to June this year, which marked a 200,000 increase compared to the same period last year.

“This is the best product we have offered to meet the people’s need,” he said.

He said the one-hour passport service is available at 28 out of 35 branches nationwide.

The service is available in Alor Setar, Langkawi, Kulim, Bukit Kayu Hitam, Muar, Mersing, Kukup, Segamat, Kuantan, Raub, Temerloh, Lumut, Teluk Intan, Pengkalan Hulu, Taiping, Tawau, Sandakan, Bintulu, Sibu and Miri.

Abdul Rahman said that despite the speedy processing time, the security features have a 100% record with no forgeries or tampering reported yet.

“Malaysia offers the fastest passport processing time, our closet rival can only achieve it within three days,” Abdul Rahman added.

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