Riyadh: A plan to ease the movement of traffic on the King Fahd Causeway and avert bottlenecks has been unveiled.
A new technique will be used to assess the potential risk of each car and evaluate passengers’ previous records of violations.
“Passengers with a clean record will have easy access as their procedures would be fast-tracked”, said King Fahd Causeway Authority (KFCA) General Customs Governor Ahmed bin Abdulaziz Al-Haqbani, Alyaum reported.
In a statement to Saudi Al-Yaum newspaper, he said that “low-risk” passengers will be allowed to cross the causeway without subjecting them to searches, which will help speed up the movement of traffic and ease congestion.
He said that a network will be established between the customs, the Ministry of Interior, the National Information Centre and the Passports Authorities regarding car searching.
He unveiled plans to reduce search operations of goods and transfer to ensure the smooth flow of inbound and outbound traffic to Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
Under the scheme, trade shipments and consignments deemed low-risk will be transferred to the King Fahd International Airport in Dammam where they will be searched at special customs allocated area.
As for high-risk shipments and consignment, they will be screened on the causeway it’s by the on-duty customs officers before clearing them.
Citing updated statistics, he said that low-risk shipments and consignments make-up 80 percent (80%) of the overall volume of trade movement on the causeway.
Al-Haqbani unveiled plans to construct a new world-standard shipment and logistic station as part of the upgrade schemes.
“The current causeway customs zone was badly designed from the beginning as 25% of the area was allocated to passengers, 20% for trucks while administrative and trade premises occupy 55%”, he said, announcing that the whole area would be redesigned in its entirety pending results of a study which is underway.
He stressed the importance of the causeway expansion plans which will benefit the economy of the Eastern province in Saudi Arabia.
All-time record
The new plans were unveiled as the causeway authorities announced an all-time record number of passengers which was recorded last Saturday.
119,291 passengers crossed the causeway, the highest event since the strategic artery was inaugurated 33 years ago (1986). The previous record of 117 in the causeway annals, 791 was thus smashed.
The huge flux of cars and vehicles caused tailbacks stretching two kilometres for passengers heading from Bahrain to Saudi Arabia.
A record number 73, 087 passengers entered Saudi Arabia last Saturday from Bahrain, the highest ever, up from 72, 083 which was reported on March 2.
The officers had to halt the movement of trucks to enable small cars to cross the bridge and ease the congestion.