Agency boosting staff and counters at Don Muang airport in bid to alleviate huge crowds of arriving passengers.
EXEMPTING Thai nationals from filling out
immigration forms is among the measures being considered to help
relieve the overcrowding of arrivals at Don Muang International
Airport.
Immigration Bureau commander Pol Maj-General Nattorn Prohsunthorn said
yesterday that his agency had discussed the passenger backlog problem
with executives of the airport.
They agreed to increase the number of immigration counters and outsource some of the work.
He said one of the measures being considered was for Thai passengers to
no longer be required to fill the departure and arrival TM6 form.
The immigration police chief said his agency wanted the proposed
exemption to be implemented as soon as possible and it was seeking to
expedite amendments to relevant regulations.
He dismissed concerns that cancellation of the requirement would
adversely affect national security, pointing out that authorities
already have a database of Thai passengers.
“The Immigration Bureau has also sought permission for foreign
passengers from certain countries to pass through the automated passport
control channels” that are now reserved for Thai passport holders, to
help relieve the overcrowding, Nattorn said.
Contingency plans
He said that from tomorrow, the number of immigration officials at Don
Mueang airport would be increased to 100, from 42 at present, and they
would work four shifts around the clock.
He also said Airports of Thailand (AOT), which oversees Don Mueang
airport, has agreed to create space to set up more immigration counters.
Within two weeks, the number of immigration counters will be increased
from 25 at present to 39, he said.
The Immigration Bureau chief was speaking to The Nation after inspecting
immigration operations at Don Mueang airport yesterday, where there
were still long queues of arriving passengers.
Over the past year, the number of passengers passing through Don Mueang
airport every day has increased to 40,000, up 400 per cent from 2012,
when it was reopened as Bangkok’s second international airport.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha ordered relevant agencies
to tackle the problem of long immigration queues at the airport.
The PM instructed the Immigration Bureau, AOT and the Transport Ministry
to prepare contingency plans to deal with chaos similar to that seen at
the airport last Friday night, when almost 10,000 passengers had to
wait up to five hours to be processed by immigration officials. The
chaos was blamed on the delay of over a dozen flights.
Meanwhile, the Immigration Bureau yesterday described as “inaccurate”
media reports that the prime minister had signed a new ministerial order
last Friday to exempt all passengers from having to fill the TM6 form
when they leave and enter the country.
In a statement, the bureau said that the order, effective from October
1, would cancel the existing TM6 form and replace it with a new one
that asks for information necessary for the Ministry of Tourism and
Sports in analysing and planning tourism marketing strategies.
“Passengers still have to fill the form when they leave or enter the country,” the Immigration Bureau statement said.
The Ministry of Tourism and Sports clarified yesterday that from October
1, the existing TM6 form would be replaced by a new one – in which both
the “departure card” and the “arrival card” will be on the same page.
The ministry said in a statement that an electronic alternative to
collect necessary passenger information would be needed before the TM6
form was eventually scrapped.
“The relevant state agencies are in the process of doing so,” the statement added.
Recently, Somkiat Tangkitvanich, president of the think-tank Thailand
Development Research Institute, said the TM6 form cost Bt5 each and that
almost 7 million Thais travelled overseas, according to the 2015
statistics.
He noted that all the information that passengers have to fill in is
already on the passport, which has to be produced while passing through
the automated passport control machine.
Source - TheNation
,
