'Urgent answers needed over border intrusion'

'Urgent answers needed over border intrusion'

Jimmy Choi reports

The government on Thursday was urged to explain how a high-speed rail passenger from the mainland was able to avoid immigration officials and slip into the SAR unnoticed, after walking along the train tracks at the West Kowloon terminus.



Civic Party lawmaker Jeremy Tam is raising the alarm over what he describes as a serious security loophole.



In a letter to him, the government confirms that a mainland passenger, who had missed his stop in Shenzhen North, arrived in West Kowloon but didn't go through immigration clearance.



Instead, he walked along the underground railway tracks undetected, before emerging out of an emergency exit at an MTR ventilation building in Hong Kong territory. He then turned himself in at a police station.



Tam said MTR staff told him about the incident in December.



He said it's thought the passenger was actually trying to walk all the way back to the mainland.



The lawmaker said the whole thing was "totally absurd" and it shows that people could use this security loophole to smuggle goods or people across the border:



"If that happens... going from the West Kowloon high-speed railway station to somewhere in Hong Kong.. it also can be vice versa, from anywhere in Hong Kong to that station, and that is a serious security threat," he said.



Tam said before the high-speed rail line opened, officials had assured the public that it would be impossible for people to jump down onto the tracks given the design of the platform. But he said this incident has clearly proved otherwise.