The Immigration Bureau said today (May 6) that Immigration Bureau Acting Commissioner Pol Lt Gen Sompong Chingduang on Friday transferred Ranong Immigration Chief Pol Col Weerayos Karoonyatorn to the operations centre of the Immigration Bureau.
The move followed media reports that Myanmar representatives from Kawthaung town had complained about Thai immigration service for about 200 Myanmar tourists during a meeting between their township border committee and their Thai counterparts in Ranong on April 26.
The Myanmar side said that on Feb 7, Myanmar tourists had to wait for four hours – from 8am to noon – to clear immigration in Ranong.
The bureau said that local immigration chiefs were responsible for monitoring tourist traffic and deploying additional personnel when numbers increased.
Media reported that last month Col Weerayos claimed the group of some 200 Myanmar tourists actually arrived in Ranong at about 10am on Feb 7, and immigration procedures took each visitor about two minutes because some people were first-time visitors who had to have their fingerprints collected.
The procedure for all the tourists took about two hours to finish, he said, and Ranong immigration police did their best. The incident could have been prevented if tour firms had warned of the large influx of tourists beforehand and thus allowed the provincial immigration bureau to prepare sufficient resources, Pol Col Weerayos said.
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