Re-entry Permit Processing at Chaeng Wattana

[DogNo1]

This afternoon I took the original of my income affidavit to Chaeng Wattana (I had inadvertently given them a copy yesterday) and within five minutes I had my passport with the signed one-year extension in hand. Next, at 1:20, I got number C 296 for the re-entry permit queue and since the number that they were serving was C 222, I judged that I had about an hour to burn. I went downstairs to have some coffee. I came back upstairs and had judged it just right because my number was called at 2:20, five minutes after I had come back upstairs. I turned in my passport and documents at Station 15, paid the 3,800 Baht fee then sat down to wait, I noticed that people were being called to Station 13 to pick up their passports about one or two every 15-20 minutes. At about 4:00, I walked up to Stations 13, 14 and 15 to see what was going on. There were two people at each station leisurely paging through passports. About 60 passports had been taken in after mine and numbers being called for pickup were just in the 230s. I sat down again and presently noticed three women appear at the rear table in Station 14 and begin madly stamping passports. My number was called at 4:20 and after I picked up my passport, I asked the officer and her two trainee assistants what had taken so long. The third time that I asked, the middle-aged officer said that she was sorry but that they were very busy. I smiled because it was an effort to pacify me but it appears that they only have one or two officers processing the permits until after 4:00. Then two women officers appear from somewhere and they begin to speed up the processing. I guess that they are short-staffed. Although I only anticipate needing one re-entry, I got a multiple re-entry as insurance so that I won't have to go back out there until next year. I suppose that everyone at CW has a similar experience. It seems to me that an officer could process a permit in about 5-7 minutes so I wonder why they can't keep up with the passports that they take in and return them within 15-20 minutes since a passport is taken in about every 10-15 minutes. What is the experience of other TV members?