SEPANG: A total of 790,186 Malaysians have been blacklisted and barred from leaving the country for failure to settle payments with various government bodies.
Immigration director-general Datuk Seri Mustafar Ali said loan defaulters of the National Higher Education Fund formed the highest number with 447, 890.
The others are those declared bankrupt by the Insolvency Department (138, 028), blacklisted by Inland Revenue Board (107,884), Employees Provident Funds (7,024), Customs Department (6,091) and Immigration Department (1,543).
"For convenience of travellers, we have installed the Pre-Read Kiosk service at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) so that they can check their immigration status before leaving the country.
"Before check-in, they need to ascertain if they are blacklisted by any agencies to avoid any travel hassles later.
"Some flight have to be postponed because the airline staff have to unload the baggage of passengers who have been barred from boarding as they are in the blacklist," he told reporters after launching the kiosk, here, yesterday.
Three kiosks have been placed at Level 5 of KLIA next to the Gate 1 and Gate 2.
Mustafar said the facilities would ease the boarding process for passengers and immigration department.
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"If any of those blacklisted go to the immigration counter, they will definitely be prohibited from leaving the country.
“With these kiosks, they can check their status beforehand and can call the respective agencies which have blacklisted them to solve their issues,” he said.
He said the kiosks were offered via a public-private partnership with company Datasonic which provided the system.
He said the immigration was planning to install the kiosks in klia2 in the near future.
"We will discuss with Malaysian Airport Holdings Bhd to install the kiosks in klia2. There is also plan to add autogates at the airports to deal with congestion at the main gateway.
"If we have sufficient funds, we plan to install autogates not only at airports but also at Sultan Iskandar Building and Bukit Kayu Hitam checkpoints,” he said.
Meanwhile, Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd general manager (operations) Mohd Arif Jaafar said passengers were advised to check in early during the peak travel season to avoid long queues.
He said MAHB would work with relevant agencies, including airline companies and the Immigration Department, to ensure that operations run smoothly.