Work Permit Authorisation for exit - Form of the Employment Certification

[turgid]

Lao work permit holder wishes to travel on vacation, or home to Laos  by air. She has no problem at land borders

Holds full Lao passport , has two year work permit, and valid  multiple re-entry permit.

In order to travel by Air we have been told  she needs the "owner" of the work permit to complete Form of the Employment Certification and she needs  present this with passport at the immigration counter when leaving the country. This form seems to have nothing to do with permission to leave but is a detailed examination of the employing company.

There  are problems with this

1: The boss is perfectly willing to give her some  unpaid off season time off and permission to travel  but doesn't really want to complete the whole form each time as its accounting level stuff

2: If there is a problem with the form it will only be discovered after purchase of tickets, check-in and with only a couple of hours to get errors corrected and resubmitted.  Before you could process re-entry permits and this form outside of immigration - now you cant. Following a recent death in the family we tried to get her on a flight to Laos and were rejected from the flight  because of missing this form. We tried faxing stuff backwards and forwards and then had to wait for her luggage to be removed from the plane. She was able to go across the same border by bus without the form and without problem.   

3: In a country that claims it is trying to crack down on abuse of workers, in principle  it makes it easy for a boss to prevent a  worker leaving. A  boss can refuse to complete the form  and the worker cant leave .

 

Is  this limited to certain countries only or does everyone on a work permit have to get this "permission to leave, deep audit of work permit" treatment ? 

 

It seems odd as there are plenty of ways to check on or cancel work permits while this seems aimed to make air travel deliberately difficult.   

Will a simple letter of employment work  ? 

Any tips for dealing with this requiremnt?

 

 

Edited November 28, 2017 by turgid

[ubonjoe]

There is no requirement to show a employment certification to leave the country. Who is telling her that it is needed.

[BritTim]

Like @ubonjoe, this puzzles me also. Many years ago, it was necessary to get a tax clearance before making trips out of the country, but surely everyone is by now aware that it is now unnecessary. I suspect a breakdown in communication, with perhaps issues around re-entry permits and a risk of invalidating work permits by not keeping existing permissions to stay intact.

[turgid]

Thanks for the replies. Last time she got stopped at the passport desk, called me and we were sent to the place that did the Re-Entry permit processing in the checkin departure area. They were sympathetic as was her boss but she was travelling and we could not get the form done.  Because of the previous incident we went to the airport last week with her boss prior to applying for a visa, booking flights hotels etc  to  confirm  the requirement. That office now has a different function  but a couple of officials told us the form is still required and we need to go to the processing centre at Imperial World Lad Prao that deals with Lao reporting.

At  the Reentry permit and immigration processing section in Imperial World they told her she needed a re-entry permit and an employment certificate to travel. They gave us the same form as before (in the link in the post above) and said it needed to be completed.     It may not be a legal requirement (how can i check?) but if everyone in immmigration processing believes it is a requirement she isn't getting on any plane.   We are  stuck at the moment.   I dont want to rock any boats here. We simply want to travel for an odd weekend in Asean and maybe a longer trip to the UK or China assuming we can work out visas.   The only workaround I can figure at the moment is to travel to Vientiane by land and then take flights from there which adds 2 days and significant expense to the travel and makes short local trips impractical.