Visa Issuance of the Royal Thai Embassy in Colombo

In the past few months, the Royal Thai Embassy has received complaints regarding the visa issuance process, the Embassy wishes to make clarification as follows:

1.        The Embassy provides consular services according to the rules and regulations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Thailand which are general and similar to other Embassies in Colombo. Applicants are required to fill in application forms as well as attach all relevant and complete documents. The applications and attached documents must be submitted on the announced date and time. Visa issuance takes 3 working days. Generally, there are approximately 300-350 applications per day which are submitted through individuals and travel agencies. As for the peak season, the number of applications will drastically increase up to 500-600 per day.

2.        The current problem of visa issuance is that certain travel agencies and individuals fail to fill all required details in the visa application forms. Additionally, some travel agencies and individuals submit false and fake documents to the Embassy, especially, air tickets, which the Embassy finds both made-up air tickets and air tickets with illegal alteration of travelling dates. The Embassy cross checks with the airlines and discovers that those air tickets do not exist in the airline systems or have been cancelled before the date of submission of these visa applications. Besides, some travel agencies submit unclear or unreadable copies of bank statements and some applicants reject to submit bank statements to the Embassy.

3.        The above-mentioned failure to comply with the rules and regulations of the Embassy is the cause of workload on the Embassy staff and time consumption of visa issuance process. Consul officers have to check all suspicious air tickets as they are unable to detect among 300 applications per day which applications attach false or fake air tickets. Due to such difficulties, the Embassy has to extend the period of visa issuance to 5 working days from 15 February 2016. This problem of false and fake document submission will also cause the delay to the travel agencies and individuals with genuine and complete documents. Accordingly, the Embassy would like to seek kind cooperation from travel agencies and individuals to clearly fill all required details in the visa application forms as well as ensure that all attached documents are genuine and complete. Please do not submit false or fake documents to the Embassy. If the Embassy receives your kind cooperation, the process of visa issuance will become smoother and faster.

4.        The Embassy would like to emphasize that the submission of fake document is a crime against the Embassy which is a governmental office. Therefore, the Embassy will immediately stop issuing visas to travel agencies or individuals who submit fake documents to the Embassy.

                                                Royal Thai Embassy in Colombo

                                                            10 February 2016