KUCHING: With one day to go for Christmas, several express bus operators in Kuching Sentral here are having difficulty getting their buses to complete the journey to Pontianak in Indonesia.
Serian OCPD DSP Mohd Jamali Umi yesterday confirmed that he had information on the difficulty faced by the bus operators but said the police had not received any report from them.
“We are monitoring the situation at the country’s border (at Tebedu). We are also exchanging information with the Indonesian police in Pontianak,” he said when contacted by Bernama.
He said the police had also obtained information from the Malaysian consulate in Pontianak and special branch in the Sanggau District, Indonesia, but they reported back that no undesirable incident had taken place there.
The Indonesian consul general in Kuching could not be reached.
Mohd Jamali said there had been rumours that the family of an Indonesian national who died in a fire in Bintulu had claimed that the body they received was without the internal organs.
The route through the Tebedu-Entikong border located in Serian, about 90 kilometres from Kuching, is one of several ways of going by road from Sarawak to Kalimantan in Indonesia.
Bernama understands that four Sarawak express bus companies – Sri Merah-Borneo Highway Express, Eva Express, Bintang Jaya Express and Biaramas Express – and two companies from Indonesia – Damri Bus Express and SJS Express – offer bus services to Pontianak.
An employee of Biaramas Express said that over the last four days, the company’s buses went as far as the border at Tebedu and turned back to Kuching.
“We were advised by friends on the other side not to go further. Vans on the Indonesian side of the border pick up the passengers and ferry them to Pontianak. We heed the advice,” the employee told Bernama.
Fong Soon Fook, sales marketing officer of Borneo Highway Express, said the company’s buses went across the border but were only allowed to proceed after the driver and Malaysian passengers paid money demanded by certain groups who stopped the vehicles along the route. — Bernama