Coronavirus pandemic

All slots taken for Friday prayers at mosques

Muis said the problem arose from "a very high surge" of people trying to access the website. PHOTO: MUIS WEBSITE

All slots for tomorrow's Friday prayer sessions in mosques - the first in about three months - have been booked, announced the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (Muis), as it acknowledged technical issues in its new prayer slot booking system.

"When the booking system was opened this morning, there was an overwhelmingly high number of attempts to book at the same time, which resulted in very slow Web traffic," said Muis on its Facebook page yesterday.

The council said the site saw a large surge in booking attempts in the first 40 minutes of the booking system coming online at 9am. This surge later subsided and registrations could be processed more quickly.

Most mosques here reopen for congregational Friday prayers for the first time since they were closed on March 12 due to the coronavirus outbreak.

The mosques will provide two half-hour prayer sessions every Friday, with a half-hour interval between the two sessions to ensure safe crowd management.

Each session will be limited to 50 congregants, who must have made a booking via https://our mosques.commonspaces.sg/

The platform limits the number of people who can attend each session to ensure safe distancing measures are adhered to. This is to curb the spread of Covid-19. Slots are given out on a first come, first served basis.

Each person can book only one prayer slot every three weeks, to allow more worshippers to perform their Friday prayers, said Muis.

The council yesterday acknowledged that users had some "difficulty" accessing the booking system, and called for Muslims here to keep trying to get a slot to perform their prayers.

It said that while all slots for tomorrow's Friday prayers have been snapped up, limited slots were still available for July 3 and July 10.

On Muis' Facebook page yesterday, some netizens complained of difficulties in securing a booking, while others said they did not receive a confirmation about their booking and wondered whether they could turn up for the prayer session.

Around 3pm yesterday, Muis posted a Facebook update, saying its system was in the process of sending out confirmation e-mails for successful bookings. Congregants can also take a screenshot of their successful booking as proof of entry to mosques, it added.

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on June 25, 2020, with the headline All slots taken for Friday prayers at mosques. Subscribe