KUALA LUMPUR, July 14 — The Auditor-General’s Report 2018 Series 3 tabled in Parliament today revealed that a total of 214,398 foreign nationals using social visit passes have no records of departure from Malaysia between 2016 and 2018.

The report said this occurred as the Malaysian Immigration System (MyIMMs) could not confirm their movements after the system experienced downtime issue 4,489 times during the three-year period.

It said the frequent downtime of the MyIMMs system and the occurrence of technical glitches within the operating system can compromise data integrity for the entry/exit records at the country’s border.

"The Immigration Department explained that, as of April 15, 2020, of the total 214,398 foreigners, 5,750 have been confirmed of their exits and 8,404 are holders of long-term immigration passes namely the Professional Visit Pass, Visit Pass for Temporary Employment, Student Pass and Residence Pass.

"Apart from that, action had been taken by the department’s enforcement unit against 1,765 foreigners, leaving only 198,479 others with no records of departure,” it said.

The report said there were 29 different systems patched on the MyIMMs system rendering it unstable, following which data inputted by officers such as the confirmation of entry/exit could not be captured by the system or integrated with the MyIMMs system.

"Besides that, the system could not perform data matching for entry and exit process for each visitor if the visitor did not make repeated daily exit/entry movements (for border visitors),” said the report.

According to the report, the Immigration Department had also implemented measures to improve the system’s data matching process beginning March this year, enabling it to be done at any time.

Of the 214,398 foreigners, the Audit Department had selected 300 foreign nationals as samples and based on the samples, besides having no exit records, the foreigners are also revealed to have overstayed their visit between 121 and 1,087 days. — Bernama