Govt to replace immigration system within three years

The Immigration Department will be improving the Malaysian Immigration System (MyIMMs) which was found to be unable to confirm the movements of foreigners after frequent breaking down to a better system called the National Integrated Immigration System (NIISE), said Home Minister Hamzah Zainudin.

Hamzah (photo, above) said the new system would address all the weaknesses of the old system and it is expected to be implemented in three years from now.

“We have called several major companies to tender for an improved system for the department. As it is a huge system, it will take some time to show results,” he told a media conference after conducting a visit to the General Operations Force Sub Tactical Team in Teluk Melano near the Malaysian-Indonesian border in Sematan, Sarawak, today.

The Auditor-General’s Report 2018 Series 3 which was tabled in Parliament earlier this week found 214,398 foreigners did not have a record of exiting Malaysia since April 15 when the MyIMMs system recorded 4,489 incidents of system down from 2016 to 2018.

Meanwhile, he denied allegations that there were about six million undocumented foreigners currently in the country.

Hamzah said on the average, about 500,000 foreigners were arrested every year and from the total, the number of undocumented immigrants was around 20,000.

“This shows less than 20 percent of the foreign nationals in the country do not have proper documents and if there are about two million foreigners in the country, I am confident the number of undocumented foreigners would only be around 500,000."

- Bernama