Home minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail said the initiative was aimed at reducing the congestion and waiting time.

“We are fine-tuning the pilot project and it will be implemented when all the details have been worked out.

“We will start with offices in the Klang Valley that are always crowded,” he told reporters at an event in Bayan Baru, here.

Under the pilot project, the offices involved will handle only online applications and act as centres for the public to collect their passports.

Saifuddin said there were 77 passport-issuing offices nationwide and out of these, 21 offices experienced severe congestion.

The immigration department was forced to extend working hours and even open on Saturdays and Sundays to ease the congestion, he said.

On a related matter, Saifuddin said that as many as 2.8 million passports were issued post-Covid-19, which represented a four-fold increase.

He said of that number, 45% applied for passports online. The remaining 55% were walk-in applicants.