SINGAPORE/JOHOR BAHRU — Waves of Singapore motorists showed up at Vehicle Entry Permit (VEP) application and installation centres in Singapore and Johor Bahru a day after Malaysia announced that enforcement of the VEP will start on July 1.

Singapore-registered vehicles entering the country from that date without a valid VEP will be fined RM300 (S$91), Malaysia's Transport Minister Anthony Loke said on June 4. The drivers will have to pay the fine and complete their VEP registration before leaving Malaysia.

On June 5, motorists showed up at VEP centres in Woodlands in Singapore and Danga Bay in Johor Bahru because they needed help with signing up on the online portal or had problems activating their radio frequency identification (RFID) tags.

VEP-registered vehicles need to have RFID tags installed and activated in order to make payments for Malaysian expressway tolls and the road charge when entering Johor via the two land checkpoints.

The counters in Malaysia are operated by TCSens, Malaysia's ministry-appointed vendor for handling VEP registrations; while the one in Singapore is run by My VEP, a separate company, in collaboration with TCSens.

Between 9.30am and 10.30am, around 40 people were seen queueing outside the My VEP office in Woodlands Industrial Park. They include motorists collecting their VEP RFID tags and those needing help with applications. Those without appointment slots were turned away.

Around lunchtime at the TCSens inquiry centre in Danga Bay, more than 60 motorists were seen queueing to seek assistance from staff to troubleshoot their VEP registrations. The centre allows walk-in inquiries.

Latiff Saleh, 64, who did not have an appointment, left the Woodlands centre in Singapore without getting any assistance. He needed help to terminate the existing VEP registration of his car, which was tagged to its previous owner, as he was not able to do so online.

On hearing the June 4 announcement, he tried to log in to the VEP portal to restart the application process but faced difficulties. He had not decided whether to try his luck at Danga Bay soon or wait for the rush in Woodlands to subside before getting an appointment.

Inquiries had been decreasing before the June 4 announcement, and appointment slots had been available daily since March, said Ng Poh Heng, manager of My VEP. But by the morning of June 5, all the slots until June 20 had been taken up, checks by The Straits Times found.

Esther Chua, 50, received her VEP RFID tag earlier in 2025 but found that it could not be fitted to her car as required. The finance executive did not get around to exchanging the tag until after hearing the latest news.

"The Malaysian side seems to keep changing their mind, so I didn't feel the need to get it fixed (so soon)," she said at Woodlands on June 5.

The latest move to enforce the VEP comes eight years after the plan was first mooted in 2017. Its implementation was shelved twice, in 2019 and again in 2020.

It was rolled out in October 2024, but foreign vehicles found without valid VEPs were given reminders to get registered and not fined.At the Danga Bay inquiry centre on June 5, waiting times were long, with motorists saying they began queueing from as early as 6am for the counter to open at 9am.

One of the motorists, a 76-year-old Singaporean retiree who wanted to be known only as Chong, said that his VEP application was rejected in October 2024 because it was missing insurance documents. He said he never heard back after he replied with the documents.

"Suddenly, they said they are going to enforce (the requirement) this July. This is very troublesome," he said, adding that the announcement on June 4 caught him by surprise.

Singaporean interior designer Andrew Ho, 44, who arrived in Danga Bay at 9am, waited five hours to get help from TCSens staff. His VEP RFID tag could not be read at the Malaysian Customs gantry.

A TCSens staff member at Danga Bay told ST that by 2.30pm, he had already assisted more than 100 motorists, compared with the daily number of 130 cars that the centre had handled in the past few months.

Loke told reporters on June 4 that foreign-registered private vehicles have had ample time to be VEP-registered since the call to do so was made in May 2024.

The minister added that 231,018 Singapore-registered private individually owned vehicles have signed up for the VEP, with 15 per cent yet to activate the RFID tags.

Meanwhile, skip-the-queue VEP services in Singapore are seeing an uptick in inquiries. These services apply for the VEP on the motorists' behalf, saving drivers the hassle of making the online application or queueing at the counters.

Derrick Heng, director of Radiant VEP, which offers skip-the-queue services, said inquiries have spiked since the latest announcement, after getting around 10 queries daily from the beginning of 2025.

"We received about 30 inquiries on June 4, and our office (in Kaki Bukit) was full, with motorists coming in to apply for the permits at the last minute," he said.

Jason Koay, director of accounting and secretarial firm Bizwise Management, which advertises its VEP application assistance service on Carousell, said he helped with 50 applications on June 5, up from two to three inquiries a day since March.

A TCSens spokesman urged Singaporean motorists to register promptly for the VEP through the website, as it is anticipating a surge in applications and appointments at its four centres in Johor Bahru and Singapore.

"Motorists must ensure that the VEP RFID tags are securely fixed on their vehicles and activated for use once they have received them," he added.

This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.