KLIA Moments: Touching Lives, Bridging Nations

Of course, I hope the congestion here at Gate 5 will improve after this being highlighted to people vested with the authority 

Just want to share with you something about our airport immigration. This is one reason why the Ombudsman is very necessary to be pushed through in parliament this year.

A year ago, my uncle complained that both he and his son had to wait for over two hours. The matter was immediately taken up by our deputy prime minister, Datuk Seri Fadillah Yusof after I shared with him the feedback. The then Director of immigration Datuk Ruslin Jusoh called me that same night to find out what happened. Didn’t know him but it was good for him to call me. I mentioned these two names to give them the credit as I am just an ordinary Joe on the streets.

Last night, on arrival back from Hong Kong, we also went through both the same immigration and customs at Terminal 2. 

It was just a breeze through using the MyBorderPass app. 

If you are Malaysian, you can download the App and use it to go through the autogate system. It took me just less than 30 seconds to pass through! Now, there are also immigration officers waiting at the queue area to direct the traffic.

A Lost Bag

The wonderful part of the story is when I lost my backpack. After a police report was lodged this morning, I called the lost and found department for the specific location where I thought I had lost the bag. They have a number of locations for their lost and found items, so be prepared when they ask you where you might have misplaced your bag. Although they have an inventory of items found, it is better to speak to the person at the nearest Lost & Found counter.

Both the police and the CCTV team went through a few hours of CCTV reel. They were trying to identify me based on the shirt I was wearing and its colour. They sent me a screenshot to see if it was me in an effort to reconstruct the entire episode.

My son and I were impressed with their diligence doing this from about 3pm to 10:30 pm before they called us again to say they received the bag at the customs! 

Personally I am also very impressed with their diligence. In fact I was told every day they have to do this to find the lost items, including some losing their children and old folks! 

But credit to whom credit is due. They did a great job! You may find it useful to take pictures of your bags before you check in or a picture of your family showing the clothes you were wearing. This is to help the CCTV team to identify you or your luggage out of a few hundred people.

The police called to let me know that the bag was passed to them by the customs. As I was in a hurry to book a taxi, I must have forgotten to pick up the backpack after it went through the scanner. Except for a charger cable, a toiletry bag and a multipoint adaptor, everything else including an old iPhone, was in tact.

Hiccups inevitable 

When you visit Malaysia, expect some hiccups. It happened to me in Singapore too some 18-19 years ago, where the supervisor at the immigrations, one Mr Ng shouted at me rudely for thinking that Singapore  already had the autogate system.

It was natural for me to think that way, since the queue was extremely long that night, and only one or two counters were opened. The moment I saw the auto gates, I immediately left the queue to use the auto gates, thinking that since my passport was designed for auto gate system, I might as well use it.

I still recall the immigration officer shouting, “You think this is your autogate system in your country?!!!” When I responded, “Excuse me, Sir, can you be more polite!”, he immediately took my passport to his booth and spent a good 10-min checking through my passport. I had to tell him that I would make him responsible if the bus left without me, and I would complain to the Singapore authorities. Again, he shouted, “Go ahead!” 

Of course, I followed up with emails to the immigration chief in Singapore, saying that the rude treatment of a guest to Singapore was unnecessary. Instead of apologising and explaining their system, they defended their rude officer. Emails to members of parliament of both the ruling party and the Opposition was not even responded to, or any attempt was made to investigate the case. 

Finally, when I happened to find the Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s email address, his personal assistant immediately replied within 24 hours to echo the findings of the immigration department. Merely echoing the same people without carrying out an independent investigation would not result with an answer that could truly help them to improve.

I was not even disputing that I had entered into a wrong autogate system that was different from the ones at KLIA back then. I merely told her to inform Mr Lee that, had this happened at Tullamarine airport in Melbourne, the immigration officer would say politely, “Excuse me, Sir, you are in a wrong lane. That is for the daily commuters entering Singapore.” Pariod, and people would immediately follow the designated queue.

I inserted this incident to show two things: a) Singapore was not what it painted itself to be - a modern First World nation in Asia (hopefully, they have improved as my recent experience showed). I noticed in Beijing, although t their uniformed officers treated their fellow citizens harshly by shouting at them, they did not shout at tourists (b) a drop of blue ink is enough to spoil an entire pail of milk. 

The rude behaviours of one immigration officer should not be defended by an entire administration, especially when it involves rude behaviors of a frontliner and a visitor from a friendly neighboring country. There was no reason for him to insult a neighbouring county, “…like the autogate in your country?” At least Mr Lee’s assistant should express regret for the actions of their immigration supervisor, and this incident could have a good closure.

After all, we are bona fide tourists to Singapore and deserve more respect. I have said this a number of times to many Malaysians who remained silent despite being insulted by the immigration officers at the railway checkpoints. People need to be assertive without being rude to put these little Napoleons in their square boxes. As frontliners, they should know better how to behave themselves.

I hope this becomes a lesson to both Malaysians and Singaporeans, especially those in the forefront. Rude officers are in fact unfitting in their posts if they behave rudely towards foreigners.

But, returning from my digression, I want to just say that I am so glad to know that we have great people now at KLIA Terminal 2! The only thing now is for the respective departments to put in place a code of ethics if it is not already there in the system to ensure continuity even after a change of administration or superiors.