JOHOR BARU: The state government hopes that all the issues with regards to the implementation of the Vehicle Entry Permit (VEP) will be ironed out before its implementation on Oct 1, says a state executive councillor.
Johor works, transportation and infrastructure committee chairman Mohamad Fazli Mohamad Salleh (pic) said that the state government was aware of the issues and has since been liaising with the Federal Government to get them rectified.
“There are concerns that if this is not rectified, Singaporeans may be discouraged from driving into Johor and this could have economic issues for the city businesses,” he told The Star here.
Fazli said that among the main issues raised was about the registration system being slow due to the high volume of people signing up and people not getting their RFID stickers on time.
“We are liaising with the federal agencies and Mentri Besar Datuk Onn Hafiz Ghazi is also personally monitoring this issue,” he said, adding that the Federal Government was also serious about ironing out the issues.
“I understand that this has been something which was mooted in 2017 and it was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Now that they plan to implement it, they were doing all they can to get everything running smoothly,” he added.
Asked about whether the VEP implementation should be postponed to allow for everything to be properly done, he said many of the issues were due to the last minute influx of registration.
“Anyway, we will leave it to the Federal Government to decide. We in the state have given our input and feedback,” he said, adding that besides a VEP centre in Singapore, there were three others operating in Johor.
He encouraged the public to also visit two new VEP centres which opened beginning Sept 22 at the Road Transport Department (JPJ) in Taman Daya and the Southern Region Road Transport Academy in Larkin.
Both are in Johor Baru.
He added that with the three centres, they will be able to install about 1,500 RFID stickers per day here.
The Transport Ministry, through the JPJ, will begin enforcing the Foreign Vehicle Entry Permit (VEP) at the Malaysia-Singapore land border starting Oct 1.
Motorists without a valid VEP, which acts like an identity card for foreign vehicles in Malaysia, risk being denied entry into Johor or fined up to RM2,000.
Meanwhile, checks by The Star at the Danga Bay VCC saw a large crowd with many applicants coming to enquire about their failed online application attempts.
It was learnt that the number of applications went up by 3,000% after Transport Minister Anthony Loke announced on May 28 that foreign vehicles entering Malaysia from Singapore will be required to have a VEP tag starting Oct 1.It was also learnt that the vendor that has been appointed by the Ministry to facilitate VEP application, TCSens, has employed 140 workers from only 15 previously, to manage the surge in application.
The company is also said to be considering opening up more VEP collection centres in Johor Baru to cope with the large number of applications and enquiries.
