Macao's land customs under heavy pressure of passenger flow

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, January 28, 2004

Macao's land customs under heavy pressure of passenger flow

Macao's major land customs linking with south China's Zhuhai city has been under heavy pressure of festival goers during China's week-long vacation of Lunar New Year,which will end Tuesday.

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Macao's major land customs linking with south China's Zhuhai city has been under heavy pressure of festival goers during China's week-long vacation of Lunar New Year, which will end Tuesday.

According to Customs officials, the daily passenger flow via the land checkpoint linking with Gongbei Customs in Zhuhai has surpassed 190,000 during the vacation, which shoulders the majority of Macao's 210,000 daily passenger flow.

The customs' normal handling capacity is averaged at 140,000. The heavy passenger flow during the festival prolonged the customs passing time from 15 minutes to three hours in busy hours.

A traveler surnamed Li from Guangdong, who got her travel passport to Macao recently under the mainland's facilitated travel measures on Hong Kong and Macao-bounded tours, said that she did not expect her vacation to the neighboring Macao to start with a queue-waiting torture.

Macao host over 60,000 individual travelers like Li from the mainland daily during the festival, most of whom choose economical travel means via land or by turbo-jet ferry. However, since Macao's new border building is under furnishing and will open on Feb. 2,it can only face the festival travel spree with a provisional detoured passway at the customs.

A local citizen said that he spent two hours Monday in a failed attempt to file a compliant to the customs' lack of preparedness for the travel heat.

The Macao customs began Monday afternoon to open several passgates for vehicles to passengers in order to expedite the passing of stranded passengers.

Macao's new border gate complex built at a cost of 134.8 million patacas (16.85 million US dollars) is designed with a daily handling capacity of 310,000 passengers. It is expected to accommodate the increasing passenger flow between Macao and China's mainland in the next 10 years.

Source: Xinhua

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