Sri Lanka immigration link on the blink
A long time ago there was an island on the Indian Ocean to where people from all over the world travelled to. But today this land has literally closed its doors by creating an issue out of just an online link! This link is needed to issue a visa before arriving on the island.
Attracting travellers to Sri Lanka has become more cumbersome than ever before with little or no support from the authorities at the Department of Immigration.
In fact Sri Lankan missions around the world have been informed by the Immigration Department that they cannot issue tourist visas since it cannot be processed through the system, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson told The Sunday Times Business.
All tourists have been therefore advised to obtain on-arrival visa facility at the Bandaranaike International Airport, it was noted.
The missions have been allowed to issue only gratis official and transit visas, the spokesperson said.
A week after the Supreme Court issued an interim order to suspend the new visa system under the Global VFS system and revert to the previous system, the relevant authorities are still running around in circles and creating more chaos without calling on Mobitel to re-establish the old system, as suggested by the Court.
On August 2, the Supreme Court issued this order and ever since there has been no official communiqué from the authorities. The Immigration Department on their official website stated that “We have been notified of certain interim orders issued by the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka today pertaining to the agreement under which this platform is operated. In view of these orders, the website is suspended effective 2 August at 17:00 hours Sri Lanka Standard Time.”
During the interim period tourists were asked to obtain visa on arrival at the port of entry in Sri Lanka.
On-arrival visa is not available for the passport holders of Afghanistan, Syria, Ghana, Nigeria, Pakistan, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, North Korea and Myanmar. However, nationals from the above countries can apply for a visa from the Head Office of the Department of Immigration and Emigration through a representative.
Nationals of China, India, Indonesia, Russia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Japan who have the facility to obtain visa free of charge may also obtain visa on arrival at the port of entry, it was stated.
In view of these developments the tourism industry has been issuing statements of their own to keep the travel agents and tour operator briefed on the current developments. The first communiqué noted that “in the absence of a functioning online visa platform, anyone visiting can avail themselves of a visa on arrival at the airport. Therefore if you have not obtained an online visa in preparation for your travel in the next few days, you can still travel and avail yourself of a “Visa on Arrrival”, at the same eVisa fee of US$50 at the Immigration counters in the arrivals hall at the airport that are made available for this purpose.
The court order further stated that the ETA system that was in operation prior to mid-April 2024, be restored. However, even by the following week no such system was in place. As a result the tourism industry issued an update to this communiqué on August 5 stating that the issuance of Tourist and Business visas will be resumed through the Sri Lanka Missions overseas and that if travellers preferred to they could obtain their visas prior to arriving in Sri Lanka by contacting the relevant mission in their country or obtain the visa on arrival facility.
However, with no restoration of the ETA service for travellers to obtain visas online, the tourism industry has now written to the Controller General of Immigration with copies forwarded to the Attorney General and Mobitel requesting that the previous system be restored and to implement the Supreme Court order. The hard hitting three page letter has been sent out on Thursday to the relevant authorities stating that they would be in contempt of court for not restoring the previous system.
This letter has been signed by the Sri Lanka Association of Inbound Tour Operators, the Tourist Hotels Association of Sri Lanka, the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises, Sri Lanka Association of Professional Conferences, Exhibition Organisers, the Tourism Alliance and the Ceylon Hotel School Graduates Association.
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