The Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife along with the Ministry of Digital Infrastructure and Information Technology launched a day entry e-permit issuance e-service for national parks yesterday.
The whole project was powered by the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA).The aim of this is to improve the quality of service delivered and to control the inconveniences caused to tourists. The Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC) expects to develop a few national parks to attract high end wildlife tourism through high quality nature interpretation services and a low density of visitors.
A self-serving kiosk at the park entrance will verify the online e-permit and will issue the Thermal ticket to the visitor. A specific number of e-permits have been allocated to each national park and the reservations will be closed once the reservation quota has been reached. Charges for the reservation will vary based on the national park and group/vehicle details. A QR code will be generated and be printed on the receipt/permit which will be used to validate the permit at the park entrance. All the e-payments related would be handled by the Lanka Government Payment Service (LGPS) under ICTA.
Commenting at the occasion Minister of Tourism Development, Wildlife and Christian Religious Affairs, John Amaratunga said that wild parks been the second most sought option in Sri Lankan tourism needs to be developed much more to reap the benefits.” Tour guides and safari jeep drivers need to be educated on best practices that should be performed,” he added.
“We have to make all the government processes digitalized,” said Chairman, ICTA, Rohan Samarajeeva. He also said that Lanka government cloud and Lanka government network are very important for these processes. Through the data analytics built into these systems we could forecast the progress of all the industries. Thus, efficiency and reliability is ensured.
E-permits will be initially available at Wilpattu National Park and expanded to other main national parks by the end of 2019. DWC intends to rollout e-permitting to 11 other major parks in 2020.
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