SINGAPORE, Dec 21 — The Land Transport Authority (LTA) is looking into a claim by a Malaysian driver that he was wrongly charged about S$2,700 upon leaving the country due to a “system error”.

Bah Wei Jun, 26, said that his Malaysian-registered car was recorded as not having left Singapore for four months even though it was in the country only for a few hours.

In response to TODAY’s queries, LTA said today that it had received an appeal from the motorist and will “inform him of the outcome when investigations have concluded”.

Bah highlighted his case on Instagram, where he goes by the user name “the.timestamps”. He published a reel post on Dec 16 describing how he and his friend had trouble with their Autopass card.

Bah told TODAY that he and his friend were departing Singapore at Tuas Checkpoint on Dec 10 after entering from Malaysia earlier the same day.

All Malaysia-registered vehicles must have a valid Autopass card, insurance, road tax and LTA’s approval email before entering Singapore.

When entering or exiting Singapore via land checkpoints, motorists in these vehicles need to use their Autopass card to record the vehicle’s visit and to pay entry and exit fees and charges.

In the post, which has attracted more than 25,000 likes and more than 800 comments, Bah said that he went to the LTA office at the checkpoint to settle the Autopass card issue, but was met with a rude shock.

“Turns out our car had an outstanding fee of S$2,700, which is around RM10,000,” he wrote in the post.

“Because in their system, somehow, they never recorded us leaving the country since four months ago, which was the last time we visited Singapore.”

Bah, who is a video producer, told TODAY that he had last visited Singapore between Aug 22 and 24.

He said in his post that he asked LTA to check with the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) to verify that they had not been in Singapore for so long.

Bah alleged that he was told that LTA and ICA were “completely separate” departments that do not share the same database.

He told TODAY that he was eventually able to prove to LTA through his passport that he had left Singapore in August, but he could not prove the same for his car.

“(The officer) said that, however, the passport just proves that you left Singapore, but it doesn’t prove that the car left Singapore.”

He also argued that if there had been an error with his card back in August, the ICA officer would not have opened the gate to let him exit Singapore four months back.

He and his travel companion had seemingly argued with the authorities for two hours over the issue, before being told that they would have to pay the charges, failing which their car would be confiscated. They eventually paid.

He also said that he had written to LTA to appeal against the charge, and had heard back from the authority a couple of days ago that it would be investigating the matter.

LTA said in its response to TODAY that motorists who intend to keep or use their foreign-registered vehicles in Singapore should note more details on the requirements for vehicle entry on LTA’s website. — TODAY