Teams of mainland officials may be called to railway stations to carry out immigration checks on some cross-border train passengers before a joint immigration checkpoint can be set up at the Hong Kong terminus of the high-speed link to Guangzhou.
Transport secretary Eva Cheng said a joint checkpoint may not be available when the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link is completed in 2015.
However, clearance procedures would not be a problem in Guangdong as all four stops - Longhua , Futian , Humen and Shibi - would have immigration facilities.
But for destinations beyond Guangdong, especially less developed mainland cities, immigration inspection could pose a challenge.
This is an issue the government will face when it seeks HK$66.9 billion in funding for the 26-kilometre local section of the express link from the Legislative Council on Friday.
Ronny Tong Ka-wah of the Civic Party, who successfully delayed approval of the funding at the previous Finance Committee meeting, said pan-democrat lawmakers would meet in the coming week to study ways to further delay the funding, which they have said is too expensive. 'The availability of joint immigration [checks] will be one area of concern,' he said.
But Cheng said the central and Hong Kong governments still had ample time to study that, and the most pressing issue now was to get the work started - as the mainland's high-speed network would be completed by about 2012 or 2013.