Long queues at Malaysia's checkpoints after country's worst breakdown in autogates affecting foreign travellers
Kuala Lumpur International Airport Terminal 1 and 2, as well as the land checkpoints in Johor near the Causeway and the Tuas Second Link were reportedly among the entry points affected.
Long queues were seen at one of the land checkpoints in Johor after an autogate disruption on Friday affected foreign passport holders. (Photo: Facebook/Sarena Yong)
SINGAPORE: Long queues are taking place at major immigration checkpoints in Malaysia on Saturday (Jul 19) after it reportedly suffered the country's worst-ever breakdown in the autogate system since Friday noon.
The Star reported that tens of thousands of foreigners were affected, involving more than 200 autogates across the country. However, Malaysian passport holders were able to use the autogates with no issues.
Kuala Lumpur International Airport Terminal 1 and 2, as well as Johor's Bangunan Sultan Iskandar (BSI) Customs, Immigration and Quarantine complex and Sultan Abu Bakar CIQ (KSAB) were among the entry points affected.
Travellers shared photos of the long queues at both land checkpoints with Singapore. One Facebook user, Sarena Yong, said the autogate system has been down for foreign passport holders since Friday night.
Malaysia's Border Control and Protection Agency announced on Saturday that all manual counters had been activated and additional personnel deployed to manage the flow of visitors and control the queues as efficiently as possible, New Straits Times reported.
The agency added it was working closely with the immigration department to identify the cause of the glitch and find a solution as quickly as possible.
According to the New Straits Times, preliminary investigations showed that the glitch was due to a data integration failure, which has slowed down the cross-verification process in the MyIMMS system.
According to a statement posted by BSI border security and control agency on Facebook, the autogate service at both passenger halls in BSI was affected.
"We regret any inconvenience and your patience and cooperation is much appreciated," they said, adding that their team is working to solve the issue.
It later shared that the autogate service has partially resumed since 6pm on Saturday.
Quoting a security official, The Star reported that the cause of the failure was unknown and investigations are ongoing for any elements of sabotage or hacking.
“Weekends are a busy period and immigration officers have been told to open all lanes to clear the passports manually,” the official told The Star.
BSI's official Facebook page on Friday afternoon announced an interruption of the autogate service at the checkpoint.
Since Jun 1 last year, visitors from 63 countries and regions have been able to use Malaysia’s autogate facilities for immigration clearance. These include travellers from Singapore, Japan and Australia.
There are currently 1,568 automatic passport scanning machines at Malaysia's checkpoints, according to the Malay Mail.
Hundreds of travellers were stranded for several hours last December after the autogate and QR code scanning system at BSI suffered a malfunction.
The glitch, which occurred on Dec 8, was a result of a faulty network core switch, The Star reported.
One traveller, Mr Tsoi Chee Chung, said he was headed to Johor Bahru to visit his girlfriend's family on Saturday when he was caught in the queues. The 26-year-old had arrived at the immigration hall in Sultan Iskandar building at about 12.30pm. Despite the crowd, he managed to enter Johor at around 2pm.
"We didn't know about the system being down ahead of time, our first indication that something was wrong was that we heard about long queues over the radio while driving to Woodlands Checkpoint," Mr Tsoi told CNA.
At first, the “sea of people” he saw seemed like signs of an “unusually crowded day”, he said. It was not until he noticed a sign stating that foreign passport holders could not use the autogates that he realised something was wrong.
"However, the electronic signage above the automatic gates still said Singapore and Malaysian passports, so we still queued for a bit."
"But we realised the Singaporeans ahead of us were all turning around, and a customs agent told us Singaporeans could not enter through there," he said.
Mr Tsoi said he and his girlfriend started queuing for the manual entries, but there were no clear queue markings.
But 30 minutes later, word went around that the queue was for elderly people and it "collapsed", before it ended up being a general scrum towards the back of the rows, he said.
At one point, a side exit was opened to let some people out, which caused a commotion.
"There was a fair amount of pushing through that single-person-entrance, but I was glad that everyone was quite vocal and observant about trying to be as orderly and gracious as possible, considering the previous altercation," said Mr Tsoi.
