System issue causes delays at land and air checkpoints

ICA says technical glitch during scheduled upgrade caused unanticipated overload

- Aqil Hamzah and David Sun

Travellers were delayed at land and air checkpoints due to a disruption to the immigration clearance system that lasted for more than five hours on Friday.

The Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) said the disruption took place at about 10.40am and was due to a technical glitch during a scheduled system upgrade, which caused an "unanticipated system overload".

At 3.58pm, ICA said immigration clearance at all checkpoints had returned to normal.

Earlier at 2.03pm, ICA said travellers at Changi Airport were being redirected to manned counters for immigration clearance, as all automated departure lanes in all four airport terminals were affected by the disruption.

The automated lanes at Terminals 2 and 4 for arriving travellers were also affected, as well as some automated lanes for bus passengers and all the automated lanes for motorcyclists at Woodlands and Tuas checkpoints.

However, there was no disruption to immigration clearance at coastal checkpoints.

In a statement later on Friday, ICA said: "Off-duty officers were immediately recalled, and these additional resources were deployed to man all the manual immigration counters and perform crowd control." ICA added that travellers at checkpoints were redirected to manual counters and needed to factor in more time for immigration clearance.