Global Courant
To ease congestion, the southern Malaysian state of Johor will deploy 250 additional immigration officers at its land border crossings with Singapore by September.
Johor Chief Minister Onn Hafiz Ghazi made the announcement at a state meeting on Thursday.
In May, Malaysian authorities said an additional 100 personnel would be deployed at Johor’s land border crossings. The latest batch of 250 will complete this group.
Mr. Onn Hafiz answered questions from members of the assembly on how to resolve congestion at the Bangunan Sultan Iskandar Customs, Immigration and Quarantine (CIQ) Complex in Johor Bahru and the Sultan Abu Bakar CIQ Complex in Iskandar Puteri.
He said lack of staff was one of the reasons for the traffic situation at the land checkpoints.
Mr Onn Hafiz said increasing the workforce is one of the short term measures to ease congestion on the Causeway and Second Link.
Earlier in June, he said the Johor Bahru-Singapore Rapid Transit System (RTS) will eventually help ease the traffic situation.
But he pointed out that “we can’t wait” for the project to be completed around December 2026.
At Thursday’s state assembly, Mr. Onn Hafiz also presented other measures to address the situation. This included managing traffic flow, particularly that of bus routes.
“The state government has opted not to simply wait, but has taken immediate and short-term measures to address the problem affecting multiple parties in anticipation of the RTS (completion) to overcome the congestion problem at land checkpoints,” he said.
Mr. Onn Hafiz reportedly personally visited the checkpoints at least 60 times in his attempt to solve the problem.
At the end of May, he said the congestion at the Johor-Singapore land border has gone on for far too long and should be resolved by 2023.
