Vehicles queuing for hours at border checkpoints as thousands rush home for Xmas

Major headache: Traffic jams measuring up to 5km long, usually taking overnight to clear between the Sarawak-Brunei-Sabah border, as seen here at the Limbang-Brunei checkpoint. The jams get worse when travellers rush home on the eve of Christmas or the day before.

MIRI: The Christmas holiday rush has resulted in a massive crawl in entry and exit points at the Sarawak- Brunei-Sabah borders as thousands try to get home in time for dinner on Christmas eve.

Then there are the several other thousands who are rushing off for a few days of break in the nume- rous tourism hotspots dotting the borders.

Amid all this headache are the trucks, lorries, cargo containers and vans that commute daily between Miri, Brunei, Limbang and Lawas to deliver essential items such as fuel, rice and sugar.

For the past week or so, the rush has gotten from bad to worse.

On Christmas eve, the traffic congestion along the Limbang- Brunei-Lawas immigration check- points got so bad that there were commuters who had to spend the night in their vehicles after the counters closed for the day.

Limbang Resident Maria Hassan yesterday told The Star, the Immi- gration and Customs authorities of Malaysia and Brunei should consider opening these checkpoints round- the-clock to help ease the traffic and human congestions.

“There are thousands of vehicles rushing in, in their bid to try to cross from Miri to Brunei, then from Limbang to Lawas and to Kota Kinabalu in time for Christmas in their home towns. These are mostly the migrant workers who are working in Miri, Bintulu and other parts of Sarawak who are heading north.

“In the other direction, there are thousands of vehicles from Kota Kinabalu trying to head south through Lawas, to Brunei, to Limbang, to Brunei and then to Miri and further.

These are also migrant workers who are trying to get home into Sarawak for Christmas.

“There are thousands of Bruneians and expatriates living and working in Brunei who are trying to get into Sarawak and Sabah for the public holidays,” he said yesterday.

According to him, this interstate rush had caused traffic standstills up to 5km long, especially at the Tedungan, Temburong and Pandaruan border checkpoints.

“To make matters worse, there is only one ferry operating (at Pandaruan River) between Brunei and Lawas, Sarawak’s northernmost district.

“There are those who couldn’t make it across the border because the Immigration checkpoints are closed (after 10pm). They have to spend the night and sleep in their vehicles,” he said.

One of those travellers who found himself caught in the standstill was lawyer Paul Anyie Raja.

He was rushing back from his office in Bintulu to Long Semadoh in the Ba’Kelalan highlands, a distance of about 600km by road, on Friday.

He told The Star that there were so many others who were stranded in no man’s land (between the two boundaries).

“It took my family and I about four hours and 45 minutes just to make it onto the ferry to get across the Pandaruan river.

“It took us seven hours to get from Brunei to Lawas town. These traffic jams are regular happenings in these border places now.

“The problem is getting ever serious and yet the relevant authorities are slow in coming up with a solution,” he lamented.

Anyie said the only long-term solution would be to construct a road from Miri to Limbang to Lawas direct, by-passing Brunei.

This way, the interstate travellers between Sarawak and Sabah can move without any breaks, since they will not have to wait for Immigration and Customs clearance inside Brunei.

He appealed to the Federal Government to take note of this matter since the problem will only get worse in time to come as the population increases and socio-economic exchanges between Sarawak- Brunei-Sabah surge.

Every year, the Miri-Brunei border checkpoint registered some 1.3 million crossings.

By STEPHEN THEN