HE WENT to Republic Polytechnic (RP) on Tuesday, the first day of enrolment, hoping to finish the admission procedure quickly.

Yang Jia Wen, 21, and his mother, Madam Ong Choo Geok, 58, arrived at the campus in Woodlands at 3pm.

But he did not manage to enrol before the booths closed at 5pm on Tuesday.

The enrolment booths are open from 9am to 5pm. The poly's enrolment started on Tuesday and will end tomorrow.

The New Paper reported yesterday that there was a long queue and many students, who took hours to register, were upset by the wait.

However, when Jia Wen made another trip to the poly yesterday, he was pleasantly surprised at how smoothly things went.

A spokesman for RP said the school had introduced measures to ease the congestion.

He said: 'Manpower at the different booths were increased by about 20 per cent.'

Students have to go to about five different booths to complete the registration, which includes verifying their personal particulars, making payment and taking photographs for their student cards.

At the booth where students had to input their personal particulars into the school's database, the number of computer terminals was increased from 20 to 24.

This was the station that held up the queue because students spent the most time there.

Big improvement

When The New Paper was at the poly at 2.30pm yesterday, there was no queue.

'It's much better today. Compared to yesterday, the queue was a lot shorter,' Jia Wen said.

Another student, Khoo Sing Yee, 17 agreed, saying: '(The queue) moved very fast today. I didn't even have to queue for registration.'

The school attributed the large crowd on Tuesday to a larger intake this year.

The spokesman declined to mention the percentage increase of this year's intake.

Most students had completed their registration on the first day.

Audrey Tan Ruiping, newsroom intern