KUALA LUMPUR, March 31 ― Malaysia’s Immigration Department maintained today that its existing system cannot cope with or store details from Interpol’s 40.2 million stolen and lost passports database, despite recently being spurned by the global policing agency for blaming its shortcomings on technology.

Department deputy director-general Datuk Sakib Kusmi confirmed what Home Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said last week that trying to incorporate checks with the International Criminal Police Organisation’s global database would only slow down passenger clearance at airports.

“It will burden the department’s data management system, if we try to access or use Interpol’s data,” Sakib was quoted as saying by local daily Sinar Harian.

Sakib pointed out that only a few countries in the world are presently capable of checking Interpol’s database in real time, but added that Malaysia will seek to upgrade its systems in the future to enable the storage of more data.

In Parliament last week, Zahid said checks against the massive database of stolen passports could slow down clearance of passengers at airports.

On Friday, Interpol criticised Zahid’s remark, saying Malaysia’s decision to not use its database before approving entry of foreigners “cannot be defended by falsely blaming technology or Interpol”.

“If there is any responsibility or blame for this failure, it rests solely with Malaysia’s Immigration Department,” it had said.

Interpol added that it takes mere seconds to show whether a passport is listed in the Interpol database, with “recent tests providing results in 0.2 seconds”.

Today, Sinar Harian also reported Sakib as saying that Malaysia works together with neighbours Singapore and Indonesia, where the two detected attempts at passport fraud by their own nationals.

Malaysia has to rely on Interpol database for other countries which do not give notice of stolen and lost passports, he said.

“A total of 350 cases of lost passports were reported to us by various countries in 2013. For this year, 100 cases have been reported so far,” he said.

Two Iranian nationals managed to board the missing Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370 using stolen passports, raising questions on Malaysia’s ability to effectively control its borders.

Interpol said that before the MH370’s disappearance, Malaysia had not carried out any checks this year against the international database of stolen and lost passports.