The thousands of visitors, expats and Thais who entered and exited the country on Sunday were not logged into (or out of) the immigration system due to a software failure.
Officers at immigration said their PIBICS system, which logs the details of TM6 cards, wasn’t working, reported Daily News. TM6 cards are the arrival/departure cards that you fill out on the plane. Half is retained by Immigration and the other half stapled into your passport for when you depart.
Since officials have the actual paper stubs, they are now trying to enter the backlog of cards as quickly as they can (and without losing any).
A spokesman for Immigration noted that it was a fairly serious breach of security.
It has not been announced how long the PIBICS system was down on Sunday, but it was down nationwide.
At the main international airport of Bangkok, Suvarnabhumi, almost 10,000 tourists arrived or left on Sunday, leaving a very large number of details unrecorded.
A spokesman for Immigration, Kritsana Patanacharoen, made the point that the preach meant that criminals may have entered or left the country without detection.
As of now, the recording system is working correctly.
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