All slots for Friday prayers at mosques taken up
All slots for this Friday's 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 Facebook yesterday.
The council said the site saw a surge in booking attempts in the first 40 minutes of the system coming online at 9am. This surge later subsided and registrations could be processed more quickly.
Most mosques here will reopen for Friday prayers for the first time since they were closed on March 12 because of the coronavirus outbreak. The mosques will provide two half-hour prayer sessions every Friday.
Each session will be limited to 50 congregants, who must have made a booking via ourmosques.commonspaces.sg
The platform limits the number of people who can attend each session to ensure safe distancing measures are adhered to. 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.
It acknowledged yesterday that users had some "difficulty" accessing the booking system, and called for Muslims here to keep trying to get a slot.
It said while all slots for tomorrow's Friday prayers have been snapped up, limited slots were still available for July 3 and 10.
On Muis' Facebook page yesterday, some netizens complained of difficulties in securing a booking, while others said they did not receive a confirmation and wondered whether they could turn up.
Around 3pm yesterday, Muis posted a Facebook update, saying its system was in the process of sending out confirmation e-mails. Congregants can also take a screenshot of their successful booking as proof of entry to mosques, it added.
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