All contra lanes at Johor land checkpoints open for Christmas and New Year

KULAI: All contra lanes at the two land Customs, Immigration and Quarantine (CIQ) checkpoints in Johor will be activated in anticipation of a high volume of vehicles from Singapore during the Christmas and New Year celebrations.

State works, transportation and infrastructure committee chairman Mohamad Fazli Mohamad Salleh said the government anticipated that there would be heavy traffic from Singapore at both the Causeway in Johor Baru and Second Link in Iskandar Puteri.

“(The activation of contra lanes) is to help ease congestion... for those entering Malaysia from the island republic,” he told the media after the handing over ceremony of the S-bend project on Federal Route FT001 along the Johor Baru-Air Hitam stretch here today.

On Dec 19, Singapore’s Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) said travellers who plan to enter Malaysia by car during the year-end festivities should expect to wait up to three hours for Immigration clearance.

ICA said it expects very heavy traffic at both Woodlands and Tuas checkpoints till the end of the year given the consecutive long weekends of Dec 23-25 and Dec 30-Jan 1.

It is learnt that traffic flow at both land checkpoints has already exceeded pre-pandemic levels.

For the Dec 15-17 period, more than 1.3 million travellers used the checkpoints, for an average of nearly 435,000 a day – an increase of almost 30,000 over the same period in 2019.