YESTERDAY, the government has launched the enforcement of Integrated Manasik Monitoring System (IMAMS) over tourism agents which have licenses to manage Umrah packages in Malaysia.

It is learnt the purpose of this system is to overcome issues on Umrah scams and to protect the people from such fraudulent activities in the future.

Furthermore, IMAMS will be a transformation drive for umrah regulatory management in Malaysia to make it more organised in a systematic manner.

Based on statistic by Ministry of Domestic Trade, Co-operatives and Consumerism, 3,762 cases were filed between year 2012 until October 2017 to the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) to investigate scams with the total claims exceeded RM23 million.

To this end, Umrah activities should be monitored efficiently through a new system as it becomes more prominent for the people.

Nevertheless, despite the benefits, many of us have different opinions and feelings on such a system.

In reality, IMAMS is seen as a ‘middle-man’ to collect additional charges up to RM90.10 per person for Umrah management as it duplicates the function of the Immigration Department, not unlike what MyEG did in previous years.

In this regard, the government through the Ministry of Tourism and Culture (Motac) should provide further clarification to avoid misunderstanding among people due to the perception that IMAMS will benefit a certain category of people instead of the people as a whole. – December 16, 2017.

* Ahmad Shahir Abdul Aziz is a post-graduate student at Universiti Sains Malaysia.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.