By Afina Ismail
GOMBAK, 17 April 2017: The Office of International Affairs had their second public meeting recently to clear the visa issues currently faced by IIUM’s international students.
Its director, Prof. Dr. Amir Akramin Shafie addressed the question on the progress of applications of visas raised by the students.
He said, œThe Visa Unit only facilitates, we try to get the documentations ready, we do the checking and then we submit the application. The one which approves or disapproves is the Immigration authorities. What we are facing now is that sometimes they approve and sometimes they dont approve.
“If the application is disapproved, what we do is we call the Immigration office to make the appeal, to see if there’s any chance or not for it to be approved. If the chance is very slim, well advise you to go back, and if theres a chance, we wont ask you to go back. To go back, to travel out of IIUM, is always the last advice that well give you, Dr. Amir added.
He said that the progress is still an ongoing discussion and he hoped to try and solve the problem by the end of this year.
Other than that, there was also an issue of miscommunication between the students and the officers from the Visa Unit. One of the students, Syed Abdullah, from Nigeria stated that sometimes he had miscommunication with the officer when applying for a visa.
He said, œI think we need to have a case officer to attend to us individually so that theres no situation whereby one staff is handling multiple tasks alone.
In response to the question, Dr Amir said, œAt the moment, we are trying to call you by phone or contact you by email, and what we can do is to have a proper system so that everyone can get latest updates by us, so now we are trying to talk about this with the ITD.
To further assist the students, the office also provides them with a 24-hour hotline where they can contact the Unit if they face any problem.***