Airport Immigration chief hopes to up staffing

PHUKET: Pol Col Chirdchai Rattanametanon, the new Superintendent of the Immigration Office at Phuket International Airport, has applied for more officers in order to reduce tiresome delays in processing tourists.

Col Chirdchai told the Gazette, “I understand that there are not enough Immigration officers at the airport to process the volume of tourists, but I have already applied to my superior officer to have more officers stationed there.”

He said that there are currently about 50 officers who man the immigration counters at the airport, but added that half of them worked the day shift and the other half worked the night shift.

“We have officers standing by at both the arrival and the departure counters, but inbound and outbound passenger traffic totals around 7,000 people each day at the moment. We have nine arrival and six departure counters, but sometimes there are too many people at the same time. We are trying to solve that problem,” Col Chirdchai said.

“We always serve children and elderly people first,” he added.

The move to speed up Immigration clearance at the airport follows criticism from tourists.

One British visitor wrote to the Gazette, “I arrived on Tuesday, November 29 and waited nearly an hour, the reason being that there were not enough officers to stamp passports. The Thai authorities should put on extra staff to speed up this process and cut down this annoying wait.”