WE WOULD like to thank the readers for their letters on the checkpoint security issues arising from the passport mis-clearance incident. It will be useful to set out some of the background and the context when we look at these issues.

Last year, about 143 million travellers went through Singapore's checkpoints. With this sheer volume of travellers amid a heightened security climate, it is always a tremendous challenge for checkpoint officers to ensure thorough security clearance while meeting key performance indicators on speed of clearance.

The millions of travellers want speed and convenience. The security arrangements put in place have to take that into account. Within this framework, security has been stepped up at the checkpoints. That has led to significant results.

Last year, Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) officers uncovered more than 2,280 cases of foreigners attempting to breach our immigration checks through impersonation or use of forged/ tampered travel documents. This is an increase of more than 61 per cent from the year before.

On a daily basis, we also detect an average of five cases of travellers presenting the wrong passports for immigration clearance.

When a mistake happens, we need to account for it squarely. But we also need to be realistic and acknowledge that even as we strive to make no mistake, mistakes will happen, especially in such a high-volume and pressured operating reality.

What we must do is to keep mistakes to the minimum and always try to improve our total border security regime comprising systems, technology and people.

When designing the system, we try to anticipate failure or lapses and work out measures to minimise their occurrence.

In the case of the man who was recently mis-cleared with a wrong passport, the security system and processes were in place. The thumbprint verification by the automated immigration clearance system correctly detected that the man was not the passport holder and, therefore, denied him automated clearance.

The ICA officer, on seeing that the man had problems with automated clearance, conducted a manual face-to- face clearance protocol. After assessing the individual, he made a judgment call that he was a bona fide traveller and cleared him.

The ICA officer's security assessment of the man was not wrong. However, the officer failed to check why the passport was rejected by the automated system.

As a result, he failed to detect that the man could not clear the system because he held the wrong passport.

This was a mistake and the officer will be held responsible for that mistake.

Eunice Chu (Ms)
Deputy Director, Corporate Communications Division
for Commissioner, Immigration and Checkpoints Authority