Singapore to fingerprint all arrivals
Singapore will enforce the compulsory scanning of fingerprints of all visitors from June in a move to beef up security.
Senior minister of state for home affairs Desmond Lee said border control agents will ‘implement the initiative across all checkpoints to capture the fingerprints of all arriving persons by June 2016’.
That is likely to include all air arrivals, ferry traffic from Indonesia, cruise passengers and also the busy causeway commuter route between Singapore and neighbouring Malaysia.
"It will allow us to verify the traveller’s identity before he is allowed entry to Singapore and will facilitate automated self-clearance during departure," Lee said.
The increasing threat of terror attacks globally has signalled the move, with Islamic State thought to be behind the first attack in Southeast Asia recently in Jakarta.
"The Southeast Asian fighters pose a serious terrorism threat when they return with battlefield experience from Syria and Iraq. Some returnees have allegedly formed a Malay Archipelago unit for Islamic State, purportedly to launch attacks in the region," Lee added.
Lee said Singapore hopes to plug any gaps at border points, adding that the immigration checkpoint at Woodlands at the Malaysia-Singapore causeway is ‘the busiest land checkpoint in the world’.
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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