PUBLIC transport tickets are selling out fast at most conveyors as voters are eager to go home in order to fulfil their duties by heading to the polls next Saturday for the general election. 

Selangor, Negri Sembilan and Penang have announced a public holiday on Friday while the Higher Education Ministry is allowing five days of leave for students from Thursday to November 21 to encourage them to vote. 

Bernama’s monitoring of various commercial bus ticketing websites has shown tickets for routes towards the northeast and northwest territories of Malaysia have been sold out. 

A spokesman for Sani Express said bus tickets have been sold out for dates between Wednesday and November 21 as voters had bought their tickets as early as the October 20 announcement of the polling date, but said the carrier will provide extra buses according to demand. 

“Looking at our system, for the north we will add a bus, the same for the east (coast). Glad to say, we will add one bus to each destination,” he said when contacted by Bernama. 

However, other alternatives are available albeit with limited seats as Keretapi Tanah Melayu Bhd (KTMB) is providing additional special train services to the east coast and ETS, with 716 tickets offered for special train services and 2,520 tickets for ETS. 

“According to the latest data on ETS and KTM ticket sales till November 9, 93% of tickets have been sold for routes from Kuala Lumpur heading to Ipoh, Perak, followed by Butterworth, Penang (83%), and Padang Besar, Perlis (77%), while 96% of tickets for routes from Kuala Lumpur to Tumpat, Kelantan, have been sold,” KTMB said. 

Malaysia Airlines will be increasing overall flights from 26 to 44. The carrier will also upgrade 24 domestic flight services to use the wide-body A330 aircraft on several routes involving Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak. 

Its group chief executive officer Izham Ismail said since the launch of “Jom Balik Mengundi” on October 20, bookings for Malaysia Airlines flights have surged by 7% above their daily averages, with nearly 70,000 passenger bookings. 

“We have also increased capacity by 30% to main domestic destinations within Peninsular Malaysia, such as Penang and Kota Baru, as well as Sabah and Sarawak. 

“There are 140,000 seats made available by optimising all of our fleets to support air transport movements via Malaysia Airlines during GE15,” he said in a statement today. – Bernama, November 12, 2022.