maid passport n permit renewal

in my case, both her permit and passport are expiring. passport must be renewed first before you're able to renew the permit. bear in mind fees might differ if you renew way past the expiry date. what you need to do is to take a day off from work because it's anyone's guess on how long you'd be stuck waiting for everything to be completed.

how to renew your maid's Indonesian passport in the event that it is expiring:

1. bring maid and her passport to the Indonesian Embassy.
2. purchase insurance for the maid - rm95 for 2 years.
3. make sure you have 2 photocopies each of the following:
- employer's IC
- front page of maid's passport
- other relevant pages in the passport you think might be useful (haha)
4. enter the embassy and pick up the form to fill at the main counter - consists of one passport renewal form, and the worker's contract (3 copies) which you need to fill up before taking a number.
5. take a number and head over to the station to take her passport photograph.
6. wait for your number to be called at the first waiting area, then hand in all the documents at the counter and make payment of rm18 for passport renewal.
7. head over to the second waiting area and wait again for your number to be called, to see the officer where your documents will be reviewed etc.
8. once everything is ok, head over to the third waiting area for passport collection (this took the longest, a 45-minute wait for me, luckily the maid made sandwiches).

the immigration officer at the Indonesian Embassy tells me that both the insurance policy and the worker's contract (which is valid for one year) are required in the event that maid wants to go back to Indonesia for holiday. they're issued a sort of card by the Indonesian government which is needed when they want to return back to Malaysia. or something like that. they have so many rules, i'm confused myself.

the whole process at the Embassy (in KL!!!) took me 3 hours. didn't help that it took me 1.5hours to get there on a friday morning @_@.

renewing her permit was the simpler bit, provided you didn't go to the Malaysian Immigration during their friday lunch hour break (sigh, unlucky me) to renew the permit:

if your maid has been working for more than 3 years (meaning permit renewal for the 4th year onwards), you don't need to bring her for fomema. you can just head over to the immigration, take a number and renew her passport for rm495. the maid doesn't need to be present for this.

easy peasy, right? if you have all the time and patience in the world, that is.