KUCHING: More multilingual staff are needed to assist in language interpretation for international visitors at airports, said Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture Datuk Seri Tiong King Sing.
According to Tiong, he had received feedbacks that many international visitors, especially those arriving in the early morning hours did not get sufficient help in terms of language interpretation which results in slow immigration queues.
“This has led to much miscommunication, resulting in slow immigration queues and worse, visitors who are at risk of being declared “Not To Land” (NTL) and deported unnecessarily,” he said in a statement posted on his Facebook, yesterday.
He then urged the Ministry of Home Affairs to seriously review the matter and called for Malaysia Airport Holdings Berhad (MAHB) to bolster its staff with more interpreters fluent in Mandarin, Tamil and Arabic.
Tiong noted that Malaysia Airports does have current staff who can speak Mandarin, Tamil and Arabic but pointed out that more are needed as passengers still experienced language barriers with non-native speakers of Mandarin and Tamil who might not correctly interpret the nuances of those languages.
“It is not wrong to hire a more multiculturally or multiracially diverse staff force who can speak their mother tongues to visitors from India, China and the Middle East for instance,” he said.
He also called for the Immigration Department to appoint more multi-racial officers on the ground at entry points like Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) to prevent miscommunication problems.
“Both Immigration and MAHB and other ministries must work together to tackle these and other related issues.
“This is important if we want tourists to feel that we welcome them as a nation. This is our main objective; to portray the best image of Malaysia as a good place to visit. We do not want any more misinterpretation that mars their travelling experience here.
“On the same token, I want to also urge MAHB to dedicate human resources or other facilities to help genuine foreigner travellers resolve issues such as buying return tickets, managing hotel booking or even buying sim cards that could otherwise lead to their NTL,” he said.
