Bank guarantee: Sarawak shipping agents given a month grace period

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Ken Leben (second right, facing the camera) at the meeting with (from third left) Lee, Foo, Tan and others. — Photo courtesy of SUPP

KUCHING: Sarawak Immigration Department has granted a one-month grace period to all shipping agents in the state with regard to the RM75,000 bank guarantee requirement, which is supposed to come into effect from tomorrow (July 1).

Its director Ken Leben gave the green light after meeting representatives of the Sarawak Shipping Association (SSA) as well as political secretary to the Chief Minister and SUPP Youth chief Tan Kai and SUPP Youth Central publicity secretary Milton Foo yesterday.

Effective July 1, 2017, all shipping agents in the country have to submit the required RM75,000 bank guarantee in order to complete agency registration with the respective immigration departments. Shipping agents who fail to come up with the said bank guarantee will not be permitted to provide any service.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting at Bangunan Sultan Iskandar here, Foo said the director informed them that his department had no jurisdiction to stop the requirement.

“But the director is offering a one-month grace period. According to the director, the department is just an implementing agency and not a policy-maker, that the department has been instructed by the federal government to implement the policy,” he said.

Foo said the grace period for shipping agents in Sarawak until Aug 1 was just a temporary measure to address the issue brought up by the SSA.

He added that SUPP would submit an appeal to Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, who is expected to visit the state next week.

“Immigration matter comes under the Home Ministry and we together with our party president (Datuk Dr Sim Kui Hian) will bring up the matter to the Home Minister,” pledged Foo.

SSA secretary Lee Kim Kwang said the RM75,000 bank guarantee would be a great financial burden to shipping agents particularly those operating on a smaller scale.

He said the association hoped that the government would consider waiving the bank guarantee requirement. Lee stressed that some shipping agents in Sarawak did not have the capacity to fork up the huge amount given the existing volume of business.

According to him, ports in Peninsular Malaysia are handling several millions of twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) containers per annum while the port here has a turn-over volume of only about 300,000 TEU per year.