The Government has pressed ahead with inter-departmental drills at the Huanggang Port Hong Kong Port Area, testing operational readiness across cross-boundary passenger clearance and vehicle inspection procedures.
Multiple departments, including the Police Force, the Immigration Department, the Customs & Excise Department, the Department of Health and the Government Property Agency took part in the exercises to ensure full preparedness ahead of the port’s commissioning.
Immigration officers guide a visitor denied entry to Hong Kong through examination and Customs inspection during a drill at the Huanggang Port Hong Kong Port Area, , before escorting her back to Shenzhen.
During passenger clearance simulations at the departure hall, the Immigration Department tested contingency measures for a “Collaborative Inspection & Joint Clearance” automated channels breakdown that triggered heavy queuing.
In response, frontline staff redirected travellers to manual counters and co-ordinated with the Shenzhen General Station of Exit & Entry Frontier Inspection to set up temporary manual counters. Officers also deployed handheld devices to perform departure clearance for eligible Hong Kong residents, rapidly clearing the backup.
Customs officers direct a vehicle lacking a valid Closed Road Permit to the inspection area after detecting the violation at the “Customs front kiosk” in the vehicle departure hall during a drill.
In separate passenger scenarios, immigration officers escorted a traveller who failed to pass through the automated channel to the duty room for identification document verification.
Similarly, at the arrival hall, officers guided a visitor denied entry into Hong Kong to the duty room for examination, before co-ordinating Customs inspection and escorting her back to Shenzhen.
Vehicle inspection drills at the vehicle departure hall involved the Customs & Excise Department, the Police Force, the Immigration Department, and other departments testing responses to multiple operational scenarios.
Department of Health staff perform manual temperature screening with handheld infrared scanners following a simulated system failure at the “joint one-stop” vehicle lanes.
In one mock situation at the “Customs front kiosk”, a vehicle was scanned for its licence plate, and officers found that it lacked a valid Closed Road Permit. In another, a vehicle was stopped after passengers failed to disembark for Customs inspection, prompting Customs officers to direct the vehicle to an inspection area for follow-up.
Meanwhile, at the vehicle arrival hall, the Immigration Department simulated a system failure across the “joint one-stop” vehicle lanes. Officers smoothly transitioned to manual checks of identification documents. Concurrently, the Department of Health deployed to the kiosk to execute manual temperature screening using handheld infrared scanners.
Remarks by CS at media session after inspecting stress test of passenger and vehicular flows at Huanggang Port (with photos/video)
The Chief Secretary for Administration, Mr Chan Kwok-ki, met the media with the Secretary for Security, Mr Tang Ping-keung; the Secretary for Transport and Logistics, Ms Mable Chan; and the Secretary for the Civil Service, Mrs Ingrid Yeung, after inspecting the stress test of passenger and vehicular flows at Huanggang Port today (August 22). Following are the remarks of Mr Chan and Mr Tang:
Reporter: Good afternoon. Which part of today's drill involves co-operation from the Shenzhen authority, and what potential risks have been discovered in today's drill? Besides installing more signage, what other improvement works will you anticipate? Thank you.
Secretary for Security: First of all, regarding the co-operation with the Shenzhen side, I think, obviously, be it the e-Channel or the manual channel, actually our civil servants did go through the gates and did go through the real process. We are very grateful to the Shenzhen side for its co-operation. Talking about the signage, based on the experience of the exercise on the 15th of August, we have a significant improvement in terms of the signage, and through today's exercise, we identified some further improvement measures, for example, in how to set up lines for different buses or different transport. I think this is a further area for improvement.
Chief Secretary for Administration: I want to supplement that, overall, the drill has been very successful and was very smooth. I do not see or identify any potential risk so far.
Reporter: Firstly, how many gate machines were put into operation today for people crossing between Hong Kong and Shenzhen? And have all the machines' software been running normally? And have there been any issues? If so, how were they handled? And the second question is: some vehicle owners have reported traffic congestion on the roads from Sheung Shui to Guangdong vehicle lanes. How will this situation be improved and how will this be handled in actual future scenarios? Thank you.
Secretary for Security: For the immigration counters, today we have utilised about two-thirds of our overall counters, including the e-Channels or the manual channels. We actually did the going-through process and overall it was very smooth. We have noticed about the heavy traffic around this area. Actually, this is the purpose of the exercise to identify areas - we are talking about private car of about 1 000 trips, which is a very high volume in comparison with an ordinary situation. This is the purpose. We tried to push it to the limit. Although the traffic was relatively heavy, it's smooth.
Chief Secretary for Administration: I want to supplement that out of the 90 immigration counters and e-Channels (for each direction), 60 were used today. Although only two-thirds of the capacity, we can still see that the whole operation was very smooth and could handle all 10 000 passengers smoothly. For the remaining 30 immigration channels, we need some slight adjustments before they can be put into operation. So we are confident that when 90 of them are in full operation, we can handle all the passengers very smoothly.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the remarks.)
Remarks by CS at media session after inspecting stress test of passenger and vehicular flows at Huanggang Port (with photos/video) Source: HKSAR Government Press Releases
Remarks by CS at media session after inspecting stress test of passenger and vehicular flows at Huanggang Port (with photos/video) Source: HKSAR Government Press Releases
Remarks by CS at media session after inspecting stress test of passenger and vehicular flows at Huanggang Port (with photos/video) Source: HKSAR Government Press Releases
Remarks by CS at media session after inspecting stress test of passenger and vehicular flows at Huanggang Port (with photos/video) Source: HKSAR Government Press Releases
Remarks by CS at media session after inspecting stress test of passenger and vehicular flows at Huanggang Port (with photos/video) Source: HKSAR Government Press Releases
Remarks by CS at media session after inspecting stress test of passenger and vehicular flows at Huanggang Port (with photos/video) Source: HKSAR Government Press Releases
Remarks by CS at media session after inspecting stress test of passenger and vehicular flows at Huanggang Port (with photos/video) Source: HKSAR Government Press Releases
Remarks by CS at media session after inspecting stress test of passenger and vehicular flows at Huanggang Port (with photos/video) Source: HKSAR Government Press Releases
