Lost of Malaysian passport - the post mortem

I was called on Wednesday morning by the lady officer that my passport was readied. I proceeded to the bank as planned and went to Putrajaya in the afternoon. The lady officer took my letter and processed my application on the spot. I had my passport within 20 minutes. I was surprised as my emergency certificate was returned to me with my new passport.

It was a good experience for me and I decided to record it to facilitate anyone who had lost their passport overseas.

I am lucky though and when I recalled the whole event, I found that there is something fishy going on when I was rejected with my application in the presint 15. Should I have left the department and tried my luck asking around, I might ended up paying some “black bean water” money of thousand to some “agent”.

Is the Malaysian passport so worthy as it is in the past ? I have doubt in this statement as the Malaysian Passport come with a chip. The chip contained information and photo which is readable. One can altered the info page however it is difficult to alter the info in the chip. Thus leaving the Machine readable passport of Malaysia worthless, as the info in the page and chip does not match after the alteration. However the non-MRP passport issued in some of the embassy for renewal might still worth a fortune as it contained no chip. Just my personal view….

There were some crucial points for a replacement of passport lost in foreign country:

Ø       Your status is important -

n       if you are a visitor with no overstay record, you are good

n       if you overstay, you would be investigated and would have problem getting your new passport

n       if you are resident overseas, make sure you had sufficient document to verified your status, apart from the report from the embassy, you would need your PR card, working permit or whatever document. You would have to make sure it is in English, if not, get a translate and verified it ( no standard procedure, in Taiwan, the translate would have to be certified by a notary and further verified by the Foreign Ministry).

n       If you have dual citizenship – then forget about the Malaysian passport…. You would get into trouble when you applied for it as the immigration department would want to see your resident certificate which you don’t have.

Ø       Report to the local authority(police / immigration) -> preferably the report is in English. In Taiwan, you would have to report to the immigration department and if there is case of theft, you would also need to get a police report(in English or get a translate later)

Ø       Get a entry and exit record from the immigration of your lost passport if you can.

ØPrepare your air ticket before you go to the embassy/rep office. No air ticket = no emergency certificate

ØPhotocopy x2 per document before you hit any office

Ø       When you reach Malaysia immigration -> you would be referred to the office, and if you are good – you would have your emergency certificate back and directed to any branch as you wish.

Ø       Unless you have some hanky panky stuff going on -> you don’t need to go any back door…

Ø       Scan you passport / photocopy you passport- cover, page with your photo, relevant visa and the last page… if you could scan it into pdf then save it in the cloud…

Ø       Get supporting letter from your school, boss that state your position/post and note that if you are urgently needed back to your post/position.

Ø       Set a date with a window of 5 working days at least, preferably with no public holiday in between.

Ø       Skip school holiday… you would be stranded in the crowd

Ø       Get a flight which can change its date easily with the lowest cost. You never know what is waiting for you.

Ø       Log onto the imi website and check if you are blacklisted before you go back.

 I am lucky man with the grace of the LORD....

It is expensive route for a foreign resident to lost a passport – I had traveled thousands of kilometer of land ,sea to have my passport replaced and it is hell of an experience....