UK Citizens Asked To Avoid Non-Essential Travel to Sri Lanka

The United Kingdom has joined a growing list of countries that has asked its citizens to avoid non-essential travel to Sri Lanka, as the nation continues to reel under an unprecedented economic crisis that has caused an acute shortage of essentials and sparked incidents of violent clashes.

Sri Lanka is going through the worst economic crisis since its independence from Britain in 1948, and needs to obtain at least USD 4 billion to tide over the acute shortage in foreign exchange reserves.

On 05 July, the UK Government updated its latest travel advice for people wishing to travel to Sri Lanka.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) is advising against all but essential travel to Sri Lanka, due to the impact of the current economic crisis. It has been said that this advice does not apply to airside transit through Sri Lanka’s international airport.

The current warning from the UK comes after a similar travel advisory was put in place on May 16, following a series of violent clashes and protests in the face of a nationwide economic crisis, the report said.

It was then lifted on 10 June, with Sri Lankan authorities saying that tourism would be welcomed on an island that was hit hard first by the pandemic travel shutdown, then the present economic crisis, it added.

The US, European Union, Canada, Australia, and Ireland are the other nations that continue to main travel advisories against Sri Lanka.

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