I REFER to F. J. Simmons' letter headlined ''How about investigating under-staffing at airport?'' (South China Morning Post, December 27). I appreciate your reader's frustration but I was somewhat surprised by his claim that it took him 70 minutes to clear through immigration when he departed Kai Tak in November last year. We have a monitoring system to check and record at regular intervals the passenger waiting time in front of our counters, in order to ascertain whether we can meet our performance pledge that most travellers will not have to wait more than 30 minutes forimmigration clearance. November last year was a moderate month in terms of passenger traffic at Kai Tak. From our records, 70 per cent of departing passengers could be cleared within 15 minutes and the remaining within 30 minutes even during peak hours. As we are unable to locate your reader's departure record, we would be grateful if he'd contact Mr Lo Chi-lo, Senior Immigration Officer of our Customer Service Unit, on 829 4141 and provide us with more details so that we can further investigate his claim. LANDIS TSE for Director of Immigration
