JB Kastam & Imigresen

To anyone who live in Singapore or JB and commutes by the infamous 170, the long queue at the JB customs or the Singapore immigration is a scene which I’m sure everyone is familiar with.

What Cibailang want to talk about today is the about the JB immigration .

JB
For Malaysians, the immigration system in place is actually a walk thru, anyone holding a Malaysian passport can just walk thru and proceed to Sg or if their direction is the other way round, back to JB. This is something which I always do, and most of the rest of the Malaysians who live at this region of the country. I’m pretty sure that if the central immigration system is linked up, my in and out of Malaysia frequency does not tally at all. Malaysian Passport with the contactless smart card just needs too much time to be scanned for a mere few kilobytes of data.

What I always see is the sign, Sistem Down. Offline and numerous other reasons where the officers have to stop using the autogate. Imagine the millions of Ringgits spent on these machines. And less than 5 autogates are installed for hundreds and thousands of Malaysians at peak time. Living in such condition is surely stressful if the travellers have to wait for the machine (an average of 30 seconds to 45 seconds) to scan your passport. Discounting the occurences of those senior citizens or those who don’t travel much, assuming everyone is savvy enough to use the machine, 1000 persons will take you a staggering
1000 * 45 seconds = 45,000 which is equivalent to
45,000/60 = 750 minutes
750 / 60 = 12.5 hours (5 machines)
12.5 / 5 = 2.5 hours

… and this is just for 1 thousand, which is way below the daily peak for the travellers(on public transport).

So after making the calculations, what I see is, the Malaysian authorities are trading off security with the convenience for Malaysian travellers. SO guys, if you are travelling across the causeway, be thankful to the officers. They’re actually making your day!

Going out from the JB customs. Moving towards city square. If we walk in the underpass. We can always smell urine stench there. This is a real turn off. One German friend of ours travelled with us across the causeway from Singapore. The first impression of Malaysia on him was not so good, he was immediately turned off by the scene. He immediately compared Sg with My and if he could use European countries to compare, he would rate Sg as a country like Switzerland and Malaysia as France, and Indonesia as Albania (but why Indonesia comes into the picture? :D).

end note
I didn't follow the bridge issue close enough, but I feel a wider customs and immigration across the causeway (do i head Brreeeedgee?) could do a lot of good for both Malaysians, Singaporeans, foreign visitors and also for national security.

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