The Straits Times (ST) reported hundreds of people queueing to renew their passports since the early hours of yesterday morning, with the elderly and wheelchair users having to wait for hours under the sun.
They said the school holidays from March 13 to 21 seemed to have worsened the situation, with some told only a limited number of applications could be processed each day due to “technical issues”.
One permanent resident, known as Madam Lim, told ST that her first attempt on March 16 saw her queueing since 6.45am, but she only reached the gates five hours later.
However, the 50-year-old was turned away as the consulate had reached its daily limit of 30 walk-in participants.
She eventually managed to get her application processed when she returned the next day at 5.30am and queued for another few hours.
According to Tommy Yap, 47, who is also a permanent resident, the long queues have been a persistent problem since last year.
His wife had gone to renew their son’s passport in January at 7am, an hour before opening time, but saw a queue of more than 200 people. They decided to try again during the March school holidays.
“A lot of people told us that people would start queueing at midnight,” Yap was quoted as saying by the Singapore daily.
He added that they were unable to apply online as children and senior citizen applications could only be done in person.
Yap admitted, however, that the long wait was likely due to the high commission being short-handed or facing an overwhelming number of applications, with Malaysians not being able to renew their passports in Johor like they have been doing all these years.
The Malaysian high commission stopped all walk-in applications for passport renewals on March 30 last year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. They only allowed it again in December, but in the meantime, online applications were still processed with an appointment date given to collect the new passports.
According to its Facebook page, it would only process urgent cases involving passports or long-term passes that were due to expire in three months or less, as a result of social distancing measures.