Hong Kong unveils border control roadmap
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Recent statistics show that Hong Kong processed 290 million incoming and outgoing passengers last year, representing an increase of 4.7% compared with 2013.
Last year, the island city received 60 m visitors, among which about 46 m were from the Mainland China. On a futuristic note, the country is expected to receive 70 m visitors in 2017.
Catering to this growing trend, the country is planning to have a total of over 600 multi-purpose e-Gates by 2016, said an official.
Speaking at the Future of Borders International Conference, Eric Chan Kwok-Ki, Hong Kong’s director of immigration, spelled out challenges authorities are facing at checkpoints in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
He said: “We will convert all existing e-Gates to multi-purpose ones, which can serve both Hong Kong residents and visitors. The enhancement enables greater flexibility in daily operation at checkpoints to cater for different passenger mix at different time, and further improve our service quality.”
Kwok-Ki said despite growth in passenger traffic, authorities have been able to clear 95% of visitors arriving through the airport within 15 minutes, and 95% of visitors arriving through land and sea checkpoints within 30 minutes. A smart-phone app was also introduced to monitor performance at land checkpoints. The app has witnessed over 91000 till the end of 2014.
Another initiative introduced to streamline processes is the introduction of non-stamping initiative in phases to facilitate visitors and non-permanent residents.
“We estimate that over 90% arriving visitors will be using e-travel documents by 2020. To tap on this trend, upon the rollout of our new checkpoint system by phases in early 2016, we will implement self-service departure clearance service for visitors holding ICAO-compliant e-travel documents. By then, eligible visitors may use the e-Gates for departure clearance without prior enrolment. Face recognition technology will be employed,” he added.
The airport will also be looking at standardising its signs, terminology, instructions and logos for e-Gate systems globally.
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