Wow!
It has been ages since the last update on this site!
Have I died? Nope. Still golfing? Yes? Still shit at it? YES! I am eternally struggling at this damn game – incremental improvements, accompanied by major setbacks and horrible de-provements. I think me aging doesn’t help. Just massively struggling with my irons now.
Anyways, this isn’t really about golf, this is more on the updates on 2023 and how I managed to get my maid renewed. This is also the dreaded year where I need to update her contract. OK, let’s start with the first obvious issue.
a) Fomema Process – No changes here. In fact, kudos to fomema, they seem to be more or less sorted out their system quite well by now. No fuss, I like what they do, its all online, go to doctor, go to x-ray and done.
b) MyEG – this is where the biggest problem is. THE BIGGEST. Simply put, on the 29th of July, I went into MyEG portal as usual, and clicked on Jabatan Imigresen Malaysia. As usual, everything was done as how it has always been, and I went ahead to pay my RM631 as usual and waited. And Waited. And Waited. After two weeks, I called them as usual and asked them if my maid passport was ready. The reply was: “Not yet, our system is under maintenance at the moment.” So I said, OK, fine, we’re still early days. August right? End of August, I called again and once more, they say, “We are still in maintenance.”
Now, we all know maintenance windows are just that: windows. When your window is a full month to maintain, unless you are maintaining a nuclear spaceship going to Saturn, this generally means “We don’t know what the hell we are doing, so we will just say ‘maintenance’ to our stupid customers and tell them to wait.”
It’s VERY disingenuous and it goes to show how this company is managed top to bottom. Later on, I found out that they no longer offer immigration service renewal to maids but yet offered that service, and also worse, process payment! It’s like me going into a pizza shop, ordering a pizza, waiting for two hours and they tell me its on its way, and after 2 hours, tell me they actually don’t sell Pizza here, they only do mee goreng. W.T.F, MyEg. And worse, instead of giving me back my money and kick me out of their mee goreng store, they decide to KEEP the money, kick me out and tell me to come back 3 months later to see if I can still hope to collect my money.
So, if you are ever caught in this trap of giving them money, you need to write to them via email and also on facebook and ask them specifically, when will they give back the money they knowingly took for a service that they no longer offer? Going to the website now, at the very least, they have taken down this fake service of theirs finally, probably due to the tons of complaints from the public.
So now, the problem is, MyEG left me on a lurch. I started the process end of July and it was almost September that I began to figure out that MYEG is not coming good on their promise and decided to ditch them instead of waiting (as they suggested. DO NOT WAIT! They have no qualms about you suffering because they don’t give a shit about customers).
So, now it’s time to deal with the dreaded Immigration DIRECTLY. It’s hard enough dealing via MyEG, but from here on, its us and our arch enemy.
So, lets go to https://imigresen-online.imi.gov.my/plks/welcome
Get yourself registered and then you will find an email welcoming you, You might want to just delete this message as these guys just print out your password in clear text, which kinda shows that their system is actually either storing your password in cleartext or their admin at the very least has access to your password. I would seriously consider changing the password to something that you do not use for other services.
Once you are registered, go to https://imigresen-online.imi.gov.my/plks/doc/e-PLKS_Manual_Pengguna.pdf and head on down to the part where it states “A-1-2-4 PERMOHONAN LANJUTAN e-PLKS (PEMBANTU RUMAH)”. These are the instructions I followed and I managed to upload the necessary documents, i.e the passport as well as the current non expired visa. I am not sure what procedure it would be IF the visa was expired and thank God I didn’t wait for MyEG to come back to me.
Now where the instruction is incorrect is that it stated that once you have submitted the documents, you need to go over to the immigration for further instructions. There is no need for that. Your maid under your name will turn to blue for pembayaran. Once you pay, then the status will turn to “Cetak Resit”. This is where the issue begins.
I waited a full 2 weeks before noticing that the status never changes. Trying to call them is impossible. So I thought I was being smart and headed to Shah Alam Immigration (PKNS) at around 8.30 am in the morning.
Bad Mistake.
That place is like Hell.
I mean, without the fire. But if Hell was to be without fire, it would be Shah Alam Immigration. You go there and you have a few thousand souls waiting in line, their lifeless eyes just staring vacantly into emptiness as they are questioning the decisions that were made in life to bring them to this shithole. I know, I was there. I waited. And you are literally waiting to get to the ‘pertanyaan’. Yes, I’ve documented my nightmare experience previously and NOTHING HAS CHANGED. In fact, it probably got worse. Malaysia is absolute garbage when it comes to civil service and I am not blaming the civil servants, god knows they know they are serving garbage and they are also suffering as well. It’s the overall top management, the ministers, the people who only make noise during election but when it comes to actual implementation, they take a rusted plier to take out their wisdom tooth.
I tried calling the hotline and after trying several times managed to get through and I asked about my resit status. They then gave me another number to call and I called, and got a nice enough fellow who after speaking to me for a few minutes claim that he is just a call center and he can’t do anything. WTF.
By now, I have decided to walk down to my car, which was parked at the side of the road.
My car had disappeared.
Apparently, the MBSA (City Council) of Shah Alam is super efficient. If you park at the side of the road for 15 minutes, they will tow your car away. The irony wasn’t lost to me, that on one hand you had the worst efficient people in the immigration and on the other hand, MBSA are like sharpshooters shooting turkeys when it comes to doing their job.
I got into Grab and went over to the compound, paid RM150 and collected my car. I even complimented the officer there, saying, I wish MBSA would take over the cursed immigration service, since they are so deadly efficient.
Giving up going to the hellhole, I then tried my hand in trying to email again to no avail, call again but never could get through and finally went over to Facebook. Joining ePLKS Jabatan Imigresen Malaysia turned out to be a lifesaver. Everyone there is super helpful, like banded refugees helping each other out to fight the common enemy – the absolute tools sitting in Immigration. I was adviced to go to https://eapp.imi.gov.my/tanya/create, the SPO (Sistem Pertanyaan Online) and put in my request there stating that I have paid and am just waiting. It’s pretty good – because when it is NOT DOWN, you can put in your statement and request there. It seems this is the only channel to escalate, and after a week from my first request, finally, finally, you will see “Muat Turun Epass”!!
Click on it and you get a beautiful PDF that you just need to print and just slot it in to your maid’s passport (apparently). No need to stick anymore it seems.
So this is where I’ve gotten – the Visa is renewed, the passport is ready, the maid is ready, and I’ve also gotten the template for the contract and affidavit of undertaking, photostated my IC, my maid’s passport and copy of visa, gotten the stamp from lawyer for the contract and affidavit. Because my maid is headed back home this year, the booking ticket and flight, as well as the old contract and lastly registration of SOCSO and payment of SOCSO proven.
So now, all that’s left is for the maid to head over to POLO (Philippines Overseas Labor Office) at Cheras (not at the embassy in KL!) and see if its possible to get this sorted without any more issues!