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Friday December 3, 2010
Scanners for lorry inspection to reduce gridlock at Johor Customs
JOHOR BARU: Four high-tech scanners worth RM50mil will be placed at the new customs check points for lorries which will start operations at the Sultan Iskandar Customs, Immigration and Quarantine (CIQ) next April.
Deputy Finance Minister Datuk Dr Awang Adek Hussein said that the scanners would help reduce the congestion especially for about 700 to 1,000 lorries, which travel to and from Singapore daily.
“The scanners will be placed before the inspection area and will allow officials to view the contents of the load from a monitor without having to manually inspect it,” he said during a visit to the CIQ here yesterday. He said the scanners would help reduce sand smuggling activities.
Dr Awang said that the scanners would be able to inspect two lorries in one minute. “Currently, we take between 10 minutes to half an hour to inspect lorries depending on the type of load that they are carrying,” he said.
He said the old Tanjung Puteri Customs Complex checkpoint for lorries would eventually be closed. On another matter, Dr Awang said the newly opened Medium Term Link (MTL), which connects the CIQ to the causeway, had managed to reduce traffic congestion by more than 50%.
Dr Awang said that the number of people using the KTM Berhad train services at the CIQ had increased to about 600 users daily and called on KTM Berhad to increase the number of coaches.
