JOHOR BARU, May 9 ― Johor Menteri Besar Datuk Onn Hafiz Ghazi today expressed his satisfaction with the smooth flow at Johor’s two land border crossings involving car and motorcycle lanes this morning.
This comes on the heels of the proposed new shift formula announced by the relevant authorities to address peak-hour traffic congestion especially at Johor Causeway, which is one of the busiest border crossings in the world with over 300,000 travellers daily. It is learned that the new shift formula has yet to be implemented.
Onn Hafiz, who has been making regular spot checks at the immigration counters in Bangunan Sultan Iskandar (BSI) here and Kompleks Sultan Abu Bakar (KSAB) in Gelang Patah for the past weeks, is also looking forward to improve conditions for pedestrians and bus passengers.
“Alhamdulillah, the situation at the motorcycle and car lanes are improving at BSI and KSAB. We now need to improve for pedestrians and those taking the bus.
“The average waiting time near here (pedestrians and bus passengers) is about 40 minutes,” he said in his Facebook post, here today.
The Machap assemblyman, who spent about 40 minutes at BSI, also posted a 13-second video showing commuters waiting and taking buses to enter Singapore.
His Facebook post garnered 94 comments from the public as of 11.37 am, with most commending his efforts and some suggested more improvements to public amenities like toilet and bus passengers.
Last Thursday, the Immigration Department was reported as saying a new shift formula at checkpoints in BSI and KSAB would be implemented to ensure smooth traffic dispersion following high traffic volumes as well as shift change, which was resulted in heavy congestion.
Immigration director-general Datuk Ruslin Jusoh also said BSI’s CIQ is currently understaffed and has a shortage of almost 300 Immigration Department staff in order to maximise all 284 counters during the peak period.
Currently, the department has 1,074 employees stationed at the BSI CIQ, when the actual requirement was for 1,347 staff and they are looking forward to an additional 100 new workers to be stationed at the BSI CIQ by end of this month after completion of their training on May 20. ― Bernama
