Hon. Ananda Wijepala - Minister of Public Security and Parliamentary Affairs
The Minister tabled a written answer stating that a detention place had been declared by a Special Gazette of the Ministry of State for Defence on 19 July 1988, but that no detainees are currently held there and maintenance work is underway. He outlined measures by the Department of Immigration and Emigration to control illegal migration, including adverse records and INTERPOL database integration, a trained Border Surveillance Unit, participation in the Bali Process Regional Support Office, and risk assessment through the ETA system, which is to become mandatory for all countries from 1 October 2025.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Hon. Deputy Speaker, I table the answer.
¶ 02 (a) (i) Yes. It was declared a place of detention by a Special Gazette of the Ministry of State for Defence dated 19.07.1988. (ii) None at present. Maintenance work is being carried out there. (iii) The Border Control and Investigation & Operations Units of the Department of Immigration and Emigration, in accordance with the Immigrants and Emigrants Act, No. 20 of 1948 as amended, its Regulations, and relevant international instruments, take the following measures to control illegal immigration into and out of Sri Lanka: - Maintain an adverse records database integrated with the Immigration and Emigration border control system to prevent illegal migration. - Integrate INTERPOL databases with the Immigration and Emigration border control system. - Establish a Border Surveillance Unit staffed with trained authorized officers; from 2024, an authorized officer is stationed at the Regional Support Office (RSO) of the Bali Process in Thailand. - Establish risk assessment centres to study and analyse real-time data from the Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA) system, and make ETA mandatory for all countries from 01.10.2025 to further formalize pre-arrival risk assessment.
¶ 03 (b) Does not arise.
Provenance
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- Hansard, Wednesday, 24 September 2025 ·No. 1759815459006615 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
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Cite as: Hon. Ananda Wijepala - Minister of Public Security and Parliamentary Affairs. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 24 September 2025. No. 1759815459006615. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/20781