Thailand has proposed signing a separate bilateral agreement with Sri Lanka to create a special visa category, days before Sri Lankan passport holders lose visa-free entry on September 15, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Employment and Tourism Minister Vijitha Herath said.

Herath, who is also Cabinet Spokesman, set out the state of the negotiations at the weekly post-Cabinet media briefing on Tuesday. He said he will travel to Thailand on September 14 — the day before the visa change takes effect — to sign a separate agreement on the employment of Sri Lankan workers there, and expects to raise the visa arrangement during the same visit.

Why Bangkok acted

Herath said Thai authorities had cited the misuse of visa privileges by foreign nationals, including Sri Lankans, as a central reason for the review.

He pointed to drug cases. The Daily Mirror reported him citing a recent instance in which Buddhist monks were allegedly involved in bringing Kush into Thailand; the Daily FT carried the same reference to alleged drug smuggling by monks. NewsFirst additionally reported him describing attempts to bring illegal substances into Sri Lanka from Thailand — so the offences he described run in both directions.

Where the draft stands

Thailand initiated the proposal. Herath said observations from the Department of Immigration and Emigration have been folded into a draft framework, which has gone to the Attorney General’s Department.

The two accounts differ slightly on how far that has got: on Tuesday the Daily Mirror quoted Herath saying the text had been referred to Immigration and Emigration and “will subsequently be forwarded” to the Attorney General; NewsFirst, a day later, reported the referral as already made. The Daily Mirror rendered the document as “the Bill,” although what is under negotiation is a bilateral agreement, not legislation.

“Once the agreement is signed, Sri Lanka will be able to obtain a visa category under a special arrangement,” Herath said. He gave no target date beyond hoping to conclude it “as soon as possible.”

The labour agreement is the firmer commitment

The September 14 signing is settled where the visa deal is not. EconomyNext reported that Cabinet approved a five-year agreement on labour cooperation, alongside a supplementary agreement on the employment of Sri Lankan workers in Thailand — a memorandum of understanding plus an implementing text.

Herath said the pair would establish formal cooperation between the two countries’ labour authorities and a structured mechanism for sending workers to Thailand and bringing them home, while protecting their legal rights, welfare and security and guarding against human trafficking. No other outlet carried the five-year term.

Thailand is not currently a major destination for Sri Lankan labour; the SLBFE is targeting 250,000 overseas placements this year, overwhelmingly in the Gulf and East Asia.

A number that does not reconcile

Herath said Thailand identified 60 countries, including Sri Lanka, whose visa-free facility would be withdrawn.

That does not match the account of the same gazette reported last week. On the breakdown carried by Hiru News from the specialist outlet VisasNews, the scheme shrinks from 93 countries eligible for 60-day visa-free stays to 60 eligible for 30 days, with a separate 21 nationalities — Sri Lanka among them — losing visa-free access altogether.

On that reading the figure 60 describes the countries that keep a reduced entitlement, not the ones that lose it, and Sri Lanka sits in the group of 21. The same number appears in both accounts attached to opposite groups. No outlet has queried it, and neither the minister nor the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs has published a country list in text.

Not reported

None of the four outlets said what a “special arrangement” visa category would actually grant — length of stay, cost, or whether it restores anything close to visa-free travel. None gave the number of Sri Lankans travelling to Thailand annually, the number of Sri Lankan workers already employed there, or which sectors the labour agreement covers. None reported whether the Thai side has set conditions for concluding the visa agreement, or what happens to travellers in the gap between September 15 and a signature that has no date.

Sources