Crime City?

(Story inspired by fH2o in the comments box on the post of my old car)









We decided to go to JB during the Hari Raya Haji just to catch a glimpse of the Chinese New Year flavour in Malaysia and to get some dog food (somehow Gucci and Tiffy are both stucked with ATTABOY, which is not available in SG). Our last trip to JB was more than 6 months ago (that is another story).

What shocked me was at the causeway, there is NO jam at all. I didn't beleive the 'traffic dial-in' (Tel:68630117) when they reported that traffic flow was smooth at the causeway at 2pm. Under a normal weekend, the jam can last at least 1-2hours. And today is a public holiday, and approaching the CNY festive seasons, diehard shoppers will definitely take advantage of the lower exchange rate to do their shopping in JB(S$1 = RM$2.3)

No Jam at all, and all the CNY goods piled up to the ceiling with no Singaporean shoppers in sight?

Do you know? (all from The New Paper and The New Straits Times)
The New Straits Times (NST) reported that concerns about crime in Johor kept about a million Singaporeans from visiting it, resulting in a loss of about RM225 million ($98.94m) for the state.

About 23,500 visitors from Singapore enter Johor each day. During the first 10 months last year, 7.6 million visitors from Singapore entered Malaysia through JB.

ABOUT $3 million worth of Singapore-registered cars were stolen in Malaysia over the last two years.

Nine in 10 of these cars were stolen in the state of Johor, according to figures from NTUC Income, Singapore's largest motor insurer. Income insures about 300,000 vehicles, and enjoys nearly 40 per cent market share.

Malaysia-wide, the figure was 64,274, an average of eight vehicles stolen every hour.

Nationwide, Johor ranked second in the number of cases reported after Selangor which had 45,000 cases. In third spot was the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur with 21,241 cases. The two States with the highest rising crime index were Kelantan with 61.89 per cent and Sabah (31.34 per cent).