Mr Natapanu delivered the news during the COVID-19 Daily Briefing at the Center for COVID-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) at Government House yesterday (Apr 1).
In the televised address, Mr Natapanu explained, “Before I provide an English-language summary of the press conference delivered today for the English language audience, I’d like to convey a very important message for the audience who are foreign citizens in that yesterday evening we received, we were conveyed about the personal attention that the Prime Minister Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha has attached to the process of immigration visa requests in that we know that of course he’s aware of the long lines at the immigration office.
“The message is that there is no need to queue at the immigration office en masse as is happening right now we know that at around like 5:00 or 5:40 in the morning around 300 queue is already in place,” he said.
“The reason is because it is already in the pipeline that we will be granting the extension of visa permission to extend stays as an automatic renewal,” Mr Natapanu continued.
“I say that this is in the pipeline because this issue has been proposed and it has passed the Cabinet meeting of Thailand on Tuesday, which is yesterday (Mar 30), and therefore it’s in the pipeline, and what has to happen now is the announcement at the ministerial level announcement, the agency level, announcement to implement the Cabinet resolution
“This is the visa flexibility, the extension of visa stays for tourist visas who arrived after March the 1st, which I believe will be the majority of persons currently lining up to file their documents at the Immigration Bureau,” he said.
“But of course this is for the general population of people going in on queue for specific cases. Certain cases, such as those who already have other types of visas for extension, you may have to come to the immigration office still,” Mr Natapanu concluded.