KUALA LUMPUR – Thousands of foreign travellers were left stranded in long queues at Malaysia’s major entry points on Friday following a widespread failure of the country’s autogate system.
The disruption, which began around midday on July 18, rendered more than 200 autogates inoperable across the country, severely affecting immigration clearance at key locations including Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) Terminals 1 and 2, and the land border complexes in Johor Bahru — namely the Sultan Iskandar Building (BSI) and Sultan Abu Bakar Complex (KSAB), the Star reported.
The outage has been described as the most extensive to date, with Immigration Department personnel having to manually process passports to manage the surge of visitors, particularly over the weekend.
“Weekends are a busy period and Immigration officers have been told to open all lanes to clear the passports manually,” said an officer at the BSI checkpoint, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The system failure has largely impacted foreign nationals, as Malaysian passport holders continue to access autogates without issue. Tens of thousands of travellers, many of them Singaporeans crossing via the Johor land checkpoints, reportedly faced delays of up to four hours.
To cope with the congestion, Immigration officers have implemented contra lanes at bus halls in both Johor checkpoints, while personnel from the People’s Volunteer Corps (Rela) have been mobilised to assist with crowd control.
Immigration Department director-general Datuk Zakaria Shaaban confirmed that efforts to troubleshoot the system are ongoing.
“We are currently troubleshooting the system,” he told the daily when contacted..
The authorities have yet to confirm the cause of the malfunction, but investigations are underway to determine whether it may have been the result of sabotage or a cyber-attack.
Since June 2024, Malaysia has allowed autogate access to visitors from 63 countries, in addition to diplomats and their family members. This measure was introduced to reduce congestion and waiting times at immigration counters.
In January this year, a QR code system was also launched at major entry points as part of the government’s broader initiative to streamline border processing for international visitors.
As of Friday evening, efforts to fully restore the autogate system were still in progress. – July 19, 2025