Immigration Office Efficiency

Going to do some work related travelling in the near future so I went to extend my passport today.

Well, basically getting a new one but keeping my current one since I still have valid visa in it. Current passport will expire in May and generally we will need to have at least 6 months till expiry date to travel.

After dropping off mom at the market, I arrived at the Immigration Office at 09:30 hours. I intended to track the efficiency so I kept note of the time.

Queued up to get form, filled in the form (and helped translate for an aunty), queued up to get photo taken, queued up to get number took 40 minutes.

So, 10:10 hours, I got number 1133, and the number being served at that moment was 1076.

56 people before me, hmm...

I lingered in the Immigration Office for a while to get a feel of the time it takes to proceed in the queue and soon concluded two things:

1. I won't be served until at least an hour later

2. I would need to top up my parking meter, the 2 hours I paid for would not be sufficient

Alrighty, breakfast then. =)

On my way to a nearby kopitiam, an Indian/Malay/mixed race lady driver in a dark brown Proton Iswara refused to stop at the pedestrian crossing even though it's already red light for her, good thing I noticed the idiot before she could run me down while I was crossing the road.

10:36 hours, back to the Immigration Office after breakfast, number being served then was 1092.

Alrighty, I went to top up the parking meter. I parked at the far side of Fort Cornwallis since the car park next to the Immigration Office refused to let me in. For season pass holder only, they said.

Back to Immigration Office at 10:52 hours, number being served then was 1107.

There's nothing else to do but to wait. I passed the time by observing the people around me.

There were two ladies with the "I am good looking, look at me!" attitude, whom I purposely ignored and there was this lady who is good looking and trying not to draw attention, whom my eyes rest on every so often after roaming through the room. =P There was a kid who ran around the room laughing, he got my attention everytime he passed in front of me.

11:27 hours, my number was called. 5 minutes to go through my documents, two scans of my right thumbprint, a scan of my left thumbprint, and a good old hardcopy of my right thumbprint.

Sat down to wait some more with a slightly blackened right thumb, no amount of rubbing with the provided tissue could get the ink out completely, need some water and probably soap.

11:42 hours, called to settle the payment and was given a receipt to collect my passport after 13:45 hours. I decided to collect tomorrow and went to work instead.

Alrighty, let's see...

- 2 hours 12 minutes for the whole process (not including production of new passport and collection of new passport)

- processing the application with three counters serving took on average 77 / 56 = 1.4 minutes (note: there were people who took the number but left, so actual application processed is less than 56)

- so the average time to process an application per counter = 3 x 1.4 = 4.2 minutes, I think this efficiency is fair

- processing application for me took 5 minutes, this is probably closer to the real average time to process a single application, which is still alright

The lengthy overall time it took me to get this done was due to the large number of people applying, to reduce the wait time for everybody, Immigration Office would have to reduce time to process an application or increase the number of counters processing the application, or both.

Chance of that happening? Heh...

Note to self: get to the Immigration Office early tomorrow for the passport collection as tomorrow is Friday, the day Muslims go to the mosque to communicate with their Higher Being (I am not using the "A word" else I might get into trouble *snigger*), so working hours would be shorter in government institutes. Plus some people believed that when they communicate with the Higher Being, they are above the law, illegal parking becomes legal for them, and riding a motorcycle without helmet becomes legal as well, so the traffic would be bad near to the communication hour.