COI Report March 2012 - UK Border Agency - Home Office

7 MARCH 2012 SRI LANKA
stands at the entrance to the immigration arrivals hall. Those passengers transferring to an
onward flight will approach the transfer desk. Current figures indicate that between 45-50% of
all passengers using Colombo Airport are transit passengers. They generally remain in the
transit/departure areas until their onward flight departs, although those requiring overnight
accommodation would have to seek entry to Sri Lanka at the immigration control.
From 1 January 2012 all arriving foreign nationals, apart from nationals of Singapore and The
Maldives, will require an electronic travel authority (ETA) for a short stay in Sri Lanka. Details
pertaining to this can be found at; www.eta.gov.lk
The immigration hall is a large area with the immigration officer‘s counters arranged in an ‗L‘
shape and recently split between Sri Lankan nationals and ‗others‘. There is a separate counter
for ‗Staff and Diplomats‘. Passengers seeking entry to Sri Lanka must present themselves to an
immigration officer and are required to hand over their passport and arrival card. The
immigration officer will scan the details page of the passport. Three scanned images of the
details page will then appear on the computer screen shown in normal, ultra-violet and infrared
light, along with basic details regarding the document and the holder. This enables the
immigration officer to identify if the document has been forged or tampered with in any way.
Each immigration officer‘s desk has a terminal connected to the DIE Border Control System.
This system contains border control, visa/ETA details, citizenship and passport records and is
networked to the DIE office in Colombo. It is not linked to any police or military database;
however, there is an alert list containing information relating to court orders, warrants of arrest,
jumping bail, escaping from detention, as well as information from Interpol and the State
Intelligence Service (SIS) computer system. The immigration officer will check for any data
matches, check that the document is genuine and unaltered, and look through the passport for
visas and/or endorsements. Dependent on the circumstances of the individual passenger, the
immigration officer may ask questions to ascertain the purpose of the visit. Once satisfied that
the passenger qualifies for entry, the immigration officer will endorse the passport with an arrival
stamp and hand back to the passenger. They will also endorse the arrival card which they
retain.
The State Intelligence Service has an office in the immigration arrivals hall and officers from SIS
usually patrol the arrivals area during each flight arrival. Invariably, if they notice a person being
held up by DIE they approach them and take details in order to ascertain if the person may be
of interest to them. Their office contains three computer terminals, two linked to SIS records and
one belonging to the airport containing flight information.
Once passengers have cleared immigration they can proceed through a Duty Free arrivals
shopping area before descending to the baggage reclaim area. Having reclaimed baggage from
the baggage belts passengers then enter the Customs Hall. Three channels are separated in
the hall: ‗Red Channel – Goods to Declare‘, ‗Green Channel – Nothing to Declare – Sri Lankan
Nationals Only‘ and ‗Green Channel – Nothing to Declare – Foreign Nationals Only‘. There is
normally a customs officer present at each channel as flights arrive. There is no consistent
pattern of dealing with passengers passing through the ‗Nothing to Declare‘ channels. If
challenged, a passenger is often asked to produce their passport and inform the officer from
where they have arrived. A baggage search may then follow. On leaving the customs hall
through two main sets of doors, passengers find themselves in the main arrivals hall.
The main mode of onward travel from the airport is by road. There are numerous taxi services
and there are pick-up areas for relatives/friends to collect arriving passengers. No public buses
are allowed into the airport. Tourist coaches have their own parking areas. There is a rail link
direct into Colombo, and an airport station has recently been constructed around 200 metres
from the terminal, although services appear infrequent. There is no permanent checkpoint for
persons leaving the airport along the airport link road to the main A3. For persons travelling into
Colombo, the first permanent checkpoint they encounter is on the bridge at
Peliyagoda/Grandpass on entering the city. The number of vehicles being stopped has
The main text of this COI Report contains the most up to date publicly available information as at 3 February 2012.
Further brief information on recent events and reports has been provided in the Latest News section
to 2 March 2012.
253