The deputy national police chief has ordered related police units to impose more stringent border control measures to prevent illegal entry during the holidays, while urging officers to prosecute persons who have illegally returned from Myanmar, and brought the coronavirus with them.
A Royal Thai Police Deputy Commissioner General, Pol Gen Damrongsak Kittiprapas has signed a directive to the Immigration Police Bureau and the Border Patrol Police to enhance their regulations against illegal entry into the country across national borders.
The directive calls for more personnel to be mobilized at checkpoints, with more attention given to natural border crossings, especially in areas of concern in the northern and southern regions.
The deputy police chief has ordered officers to be on high alert during the New Year holidays, where the volume of people traveling may help facilitate illegal entry.
He has instructed police officers to prosecute persons with COVID-19 who have illegally returned to the country via natural borders, with charges ranging from violation of the Emergency Decree, violation of the Disease Control Act, and violation of the Immigration Act, through to concealment of information.
Provincial Police Region 5 will be pursuing cases against Thai women who illegally crossed the Thailand-Myanmar border to work despite the border closure, once they are fully recovered from the virus or have completed their quarantine with negative tests.
Police officers will be informing these women of the charges of illegal entry into the kingdom, and failure to comply with disease control protocols from the provincial communicable diseases committee.
Among the women, three of them have been admitted for treatment at Nakornping Hospital in Chiang Mai, with others in hospitals in Chiang Rai and Phayao. (NNT)
