Of course, this being Malaysia, I had to repeat the process a couple of times before the machine deemed it safe and satisfactory for me to actually complete my application but hey, then again, it had to capture my thumbprints correctly two times in order to ensure I wasn't a candidate for terrorism or anything of the sort.
The problem came when it was time to collect the new passport in the afternoon.
When I arrived at Level 2 expecting the same efficiency evident this morning, I was of course, shocked to find out that was not to be.
There were TONS of people at Immigration. Most of them were waiting, either to hand in the application form or to collect their new passports. More were queued up in different lines at different counters.
I headed towards Counter 16 where I was supposed to pick up my queue number for collection. I had barely gone a few steps towards the counter when I realised that there was a crowd milling about the counter and several counters over like a herd of cattle. There was no line. No. queue. Just a bunch of people crowding around. And the crowd did not seem to be thinning. There was no one at the counter.
So I went to the regular counter where you hand in your regular manually produced receipt for passport collection and was duly instructed by the officer there to head to Counter 16 to collect my number. Right. This was not going well.
Back to Counter 16 I went. And still the crowd not only did not seem to be moving, in fact, there seemed to be more people now. So I made my way up to the counter next to it and enquire of the officer there and showed her my receipt. She brusquely told me to wait in line at the next counter to pick up my number. I looked back at the crowd again.
WHAT. LINE?
In the end, I discovered that the number displayed on the queue screen was around 8200 and the last number given out was 8400. It was slightly before 4pm. Government departments close, at latest 5pm. So go figure. I put two and two together and figured no way were they going to be able to hand out 200 passports in the next hour or so. Not with so many people still milling about having not collected their passports or just waiting for their collection numbers.
There was no sign or notice up to tell people that the no more numbers were being given out, seeing as it was already late. So people just stood around waiting for more numbers. No officer was around to tell us what the hell was happening. Officers at the counter were also too self-absorbed to dish out too much info other than to direct us to another counter.
I decided, to hell with it. I'm not going to stand around and wait only to be told to go home upon closing time. So I left.
Somebody tell me just how efficient is the kiosk supposed to make passport renewal and collection when the people behind the counter can't seem to get their act together? So much for a quick 2-hour renewal.
But then again, what would I have expected? This IS Malaysia after all. In a country where the telecommunications infrastructure is a monopoly and TMNet is the sole provider of internet connections, which explains why, after 16 days, the blurdy idiots at TMNet have 'escalated' my case to 'the highest level' but can't get their technical team to tell me or even have the courtesy to call me to update me what's the status of my non-functioning connection.
This is what I pay my taxes for: to have to contend with inefficiencies all around me.
Malaysia Boleh!!!
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