DATASONIC Group Bhd will have the capacity to print up to 400,000 passports per month starting from December, amid calls from the government and the public for vendors of the travel documents to address the supply shortage experienced over the last one month.
Having invested RM30 million in a security document printing factory in Petaling Jaya, Datasonic will be able to fulfil its contract which goes into effect on Dec 1, says the group’s deputy managing director Chew Ben Ben.
“By December, we will be able to print the passports. Currently, we are working with Percetakan Keselamatan Nasional (PKN) by supplying it with the polycarbonate data page. On average, we should produce 208,000 passports per month,” Chew tells The Edge.
Over the past few weeks, Malaysians have rushed to apply for or to renew passports, resulting in long queues at immigration departments nationwide. This followed an article in a local media outlet that implied that there was a shortage. The article quoted former director-general of the Immigration Department Datuk Sakib Kusmi as saying that the department is introducing new passports with improved security features that may involve a transition period of six months.
Following the public panic, Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Zahid Hamidi instructed the Immigration Department and the vendors involved to step up their production rate to 20,000 units per day, from about 5,000 units, to meet the shortfall.
Sakib was replaced by Datuk Seri Mustafar Ali, former deputy chief commissioner of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, on Aug 1. The new chief assured that the transition to the new passports would not result in delays in processing the documents.
According to Chew, Datasonic has been fulfilling its side of the contract, supplying more than one million polycarbonate data pages to PKN between April and July this year.
Some parties allege that some chips and polycarbonate data pages supplied by Datasonic were defective, which in turn caused PKN to reduce its production rate while Datasonic rectified the problems.
Chew denies this. “The chips are sourced from the same manufacturer that the previous vendor (IRIS Corp Bhd) used. It is a Tier-1 chipmaker based in Europe. There should not be any defects in the chips.
“When it comes to the polycarbonate data pages, Trüb AG of Switzerland has been in the industry for more than 100 years. The pages undergo three levels of quality checks — first with Trüb, then with us and on to PKN,” he says.
On Aug 3, Datasonic issued a statement on Bursa Malaysia’s website saying that between April and July this year, it had delivered 1.02 million polycarbonate data pages to PKN, with an average monthly delivery of 255,063.
“The passing rate of the chip after 100% quality control by Trüb AG, Switzerland, before shipment, 100% incoming quality control by Datasonic and PKN is more than 99.76%. Therefore, there is no issue on the quality of the chips,” Datasonic said in the statement.
As at June 24, out of the 523,940 chips that had been delivered to PKN, only 0.24% were rejected, the statement said.
It also addressed public complaints that some of the new passports could not be read at the e-gates at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
Datasonic explained that passport holders have to open the passport to the data page and place it on the reader for verification. This process is in fact recommended by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and accepted worldwide to enhance border security, it added.
PKN in the crosshairs
PKN, which is the main manufacturing arm of Kumpulan Fima, has been quietly producing Malaysian passports for the last 25 years. When the Immigration Department committed to getting passport applications and renewals done within two hours, PKN was able to do its part.
It started as a branch within the National Printing Department, printing security documents such as travel documents, licences and certificates. In 1990, the branch was privatised, sold to the late Tan Sri Basir Ismail and renamed.
PKN in its corporate form has been printing Malaysian passports since 1990. In early 2000, IRIS Corp introduced the world’s first e-passport, which had a microchip embedded on the back cover. Since then, the Malaysian passport has been the international benchmark for e-passports, as recognised by ICAO.
In 2012, Datasonic won the contract for the supply of 10 million polycarbonate data pages to PKN worth RM284.7 million.
On Dec 15, 2015, Datasonic announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Datasonic Technologies Sdn Bhd (DTSB), had accepted a letter of award (LOA) from the Home Ministry for the supply of 12.5 million passport chips over five years.
The contract worth RM318.75 million will run from Dec 1, 2016 to Nov 30, 2021.
On April 27 this year, the group announced that DTSB had also accepted an LOA from the Home Ministry for the supply of 13.416 million Malaysian passports for a period of five years commencing Dec 1, 2016. The contract is worth RM223.38 million.
Travel documents made up 57% of Kumpulan Fima’s revenue of RM268.3 million from its manufacturing businesses for the year ended March 31, 2016 (FY2016). The manufacturing division contributed 48.4% to Kumpulan Fima’s profit before tax of RM111.67 million last year.
Those in the know say PKN not only produces Malaysian travel and security documents, but also has contracts with countries that include Nigeria and Senegal. Kumpulan Fima does not list any other country as clients for travel documents on its website or annual report.
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