APRIL 19 — I refer to the letter posted in the Malay Mail on April 12th by Shacind Anathan, titled “ A Malaysian experience of life in quarantine”.
It was a very heart warming letter, however you may be interested in our own story which comes from a very different view point. Our story is typical of many others that have found themselves in very similar situations, but find themselves without a voice.
Here is our story....
My wife and I are currently stuck in the UK, and are “locked out” from returning to our home in Malaysia. We are both MM2H holders and have had our lives turned upside down by the decision to block MM2H holders from returning to their homes due to the Covid-19 outbreak.
We went through the full MM2H application process, we paid the required RM150,000 fixed deposits, the 10 year visa fees in advance and the security bond fees and we have lived very happily in Malaysia for many years since then.
We own a house, an apartment, a car and we have multiple bank accounts and insurance policies in Malaysia including life, medical, hospitalisation, and critical illness policies. We are no burden to Malaysia and in fact we contribute quite a lot of money to the economy with our expenditures.
In early March, we departed from Malaysia on a dream holiday to go trekking in the Himalayan mountains of Nepal, however that dream holiday started to turn in to a nightmare. When we had already trekked high up in to the remote mountains we began hearing stories from other trekkers that Malaysia was going to close its borders to the majority of non Malaysians, including MM2H holders, on 18th March.
We had confirmed return flights to Malaysia for the 26th March so we tried to contact our airline many times to try and change our bookings for earlier flights but it was impossible to get through to anyone due to very poor communications in the mountains and all the phone lines being so busy. We tried contacting the airline offices in Malaysia and Kathmandu, but with no luck.
We heard that all the earlier flights were being either cancelled or were overbooked, so we became increasingly concerned that we would not be able to get back to our home before the lock down came into effect.
We decided to cut our holiday short and hurried back down from the mountains as fast as we could to get to Kathmandu but when we managed to get to the Malindo airline office there we were told there were no earlier flights available for us. We then tried to get seats on other airlines but they were also unavailable due to being fully booked.
We contacted the Malaysian embassy in Kathmandu for any guidance or assistance, but we were told there was nothing they could do as everything was in the hands of the airlines and we should contact them but as we had already tried that we eventually missed the deadline to get back to Malaysia.
We then changed our plans and managed to book and pay for quite expensive tickets to Singapore ... our plan was to wait things out with relatives in Singapore until the block on MM2H holders was lifted, but then Singapore also blocked foreigners from entry! We were now in posession of useless tickets on both the Malaysian and Singaporean carriers.
We were now left with no choice but to try and get a flight to my birth country, the UK, as we were now becoming increasingly worried as Nepal was planning to go in to lockdown and completely close it’s airport soon.
We finally managed to get a last minute flight out of Nepal on a Middle Eastern airline to the UK, but at a highly inflated cost of RM 13,000.
So here we are in the UK where we had no intention to be. We own no property here, so we are having to stay in rented accomodation and have also had to rent a car just to get around to do essentials like getting to the supermarkets for groceries.
As I am no longer a resident of the UK, and my wife is not from here, we are not eligible for National Health protection so we are very vunerable if one if us were to fall ill. All our health coverage policies are in Malaysia and of course our travel insurance has expired
It is very disappointing that people like us with MM2H are not allowed to return to our homes in Malaysia, especially as the MM2H program has been promoted so heavily as a great retirement opportunity.
Apart from the great financial burden this has been to us, it is very stressful emotionally. We are unable to take care of our properties and assets, and a big concern is that my elderly mother in law is now alone at our house in Malaysia, we can only hope that she does not fall ill.
I can fully understand that there was a need to take action in the face of this pandemic, so I agree that short term visitors and tourists should have been temporarily suspended from entry but I feel it is is very unfair to block the return of those people such as us with MM2H visas that have made Malaysia their homes.
We have been “locked out” for four weeks now, with no end in sight so we have no idea this situation will last, we can only hope that the authorities will review the current MCO and allow MM2H holders to return to their homes in the same way that PR holders are allowed to return.
I feel that this action to not allow MM2H holders to return to their homes in Malaysia may have a negative future effect on other people that are considering applying for MM2H passes and retire to Malaysia. This is sad as Malaysia is a great place to live and I am sure that the Malaysian economy also benefits greatly from high nett worth people wishing to retire there. I believe it is in everyone’s interest to allow MM2H holders back in to the country as what was once a win-win policy has now become a lose-lose situation.
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
