Malaysia immigration data ‘inaccurate’: Audit report

The Malaysian Auditor General’s report has questioned the security of the country’s electronic immigration screening system.

Its “data was inaccurate and data integrity was suspicious”, the report released yesterday said. The planning, implementation and monitoring of myIMMs was “less satisfactory”, it added.

The government has also made full payment of RM10.30 million for a biometric system which has not been used or installed, the report found.

Contract payments worth another RM22.64 were “not supported with complete documentation,” it added. The country is investigating frequent breakdowns of the security screening system in Kuala Lumpur’s international airport.

There is a “high possibility” that travellers are being allowed to slip in without proper checks, Deputy Home Minister Datuk Nur Jazlan Mohamed told The Straits Times yesterday.

This could allow terrorists, human traffickers and illegal immigrants to be let in undetected.

"There is a high possibility of complicity by enforcement, airport and airline staff from both the countries of origin and Malaysia," he said. "We suspect that a syndicate is hacking the system at opportune moments to allow people to enter the country illegally."

When the system goes down, immigration officers manually record arrivals and departures. But these are not immediately updated electronically, Datuk Nur Jazlan added.

"Checks by us found that the records are not being updated into the system on the same day itself,” The Star quotes him as saying. Photo from Datuk Nur Jazlan Mohamed’s Facebook page