Press Statement By Irene Chang:
With the MCO being extended till 28th June 2021 and with the uncertainty of the operation hours of the government sectors due to the fluidity of the Covid-19 situation, JPN should allow applications for registration of documents to be made online.
Currently, any cases which requires prompt registration by JPN can only be made after a request has been made to the Bilik Gerakan who has to assess the urgency of the circumstances under which the request is made. Only when the Bilik Gerakan has approved the request, would the physical appointment be set up with JPN personnel to process the registration. Even though, the request is usually promptly and professionally attended to by Bilik Gerakan, it is troublesome and time consuming.
Since with or without Covid-19, our state is embracing digitalisation as we head towards digital economy, it should be the normal course of time before all applications to government departments would go digital.
There is therefore no reason why this has still not been put in place and being practised by JPN especially when it has already been more than 1 year since the pandemic.
Especially for the following applications, online applications should be made available during the various MCO periods for the following reasons:
1) Death certificates for those who died during the MCO period. If online application is available, the registration of death would avoid being late registration of death after the MCO has been lifted. In the event of these late registration, this would delay the issuance of the death certificates as they have to be sent to Kuching for such issuance and would take more than 2-3 months in spite of their earlier assurance than it would only take 20 days.
2) Issuance and replacement of Identity card.
If online applications are available, it would also minimise the necessity for physical attendance by both staff and customer and hence would reduce overcrowding and heavy traffic at various counters when the departments are opened after the MCO is lifted.
