THE nation’s immigration infrastructure has come under renewed scrutiny after a nationwide system failure paralysed border checkpoints across the country, triggering massive congestion and lengthy delays for travellers and daily commuters.
The disruption, which lasted for approximately five hours on Thursday morning, crippled computerised immigration operations at nearly all entry points nationwide and forced officers to revert to manual clearance procedures, reported The Star.
The latest breakdown marks the second major collapse of the system in just over a month, intensifying concerns over the reliability of the country’s decades-old immigration technology network.
Thousands of Malaysians travelling to Singapore for work were among the worst affected, particularly at the busy Johor land crossings where congestion rapidly escalated during the morning rush hour.
Immigration officers were deployed urgently to manage queues manually at vehicle lanes, motorcycle checkpoints and bus terminals after automated systems suddenly became inaccessible.
A Home Ministry official said the disruption affected most of Malaysia’s 114 immigration checkpoints, including airports, seaports and land crossings.
“We had to redeploy all our personnel to man manual counters at the bus halls, motorcycle and vehicle lanes,” the official said.
“Not only were our autogates down, but even our facial recognition systems were also out,” the official added, noting that additional security personnel were deployed to maintain public order during the disruption.
Malaysia currently operates 56 maritime entry points, 30 land checkpoints and 28 airports under its immigration control network.
The outage reportedly began as early as 4.30 am according to travellers stranded at checkpoints, although Immigration Department director-general Zakaria Shaaban said the system failure occurred around 5 am and was restored by approximately 8.45 am.
According to The Star, he attributed the breakdown to technical problems at the Malaysian Immigration Systems, or MyIMM, data centre.
“The system was back online after rectifying work was carried out. The system was not hacked,” Zakaria said.
“The MyIMMs system is old, and I cannot ensure that such a problem will not recur,” he added.
“The MyIMMS system is already 30 years old. Problems are bound to happen.”
The incident has renewed debate over the government’s delayed transition towards a replacement platform known as the National Integrated Immigration System, or NIISe, which is scheduled to fully replace MyIMMs by 2028.
Zakaria acknowledged that similar disruptions could continue until the newer system becomes operational nationwide.
“We will endure them until the NIISe system is ready,” he said.
Earlier this month, Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail said authorities had instructed the vendor handling the new MyNIISe system to prepare contingency and mitigation measures ahead of the launch of the Johor Bahru-Singapore Rapid Transit System Link next year.
The government, he said previously, remains committed to minimising technical disruptions once the upgraded immigration platform is implemented.
The latest outage also reignited frustration among regular cross-border commuters, many of whom complained of being trapped for hours in crowded and poorly ventilated conditions while waiting to clear immigration procedures manually. - May 29, 2026
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