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 on Monday.
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.
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.
