A joint-meeting of the NATTA Aviation Sub-Committee and a few major ticketing agents dealing with ticketing of the labor traffic to GCC & Malaysia was held Thursday, 2nd April ’15 at NATTA Secretariat to reflect on the possibilities of finding a win-win solution to the longstanding problem of inadmissible air passengers which has been unnecessarily causing a heavy financial taxation on the part of agents issuing the tickets.
Secretary General Ms. Mihika Dhakhwa told the meeting that NATTA called on the Director of the Immigration Dept and with his support NATTA was also able to collect relevant data in regard to the accurate number of entry refused cases from the Gulf countries and Malaysia during the last eight months. It showed that an average of 92 Nepalese passengers was sent back by the immigration of the disembarked destinations as inadmissible passengers. Having said that she also explained that NATTA had undertaken this fact- finding survey at the behest of BARN in one of the last meetings held at the meeting hall of NAC.
NATTA’s objective had been to stand by the agents who receive the ADM for such cases by paying off the bills quoted by the airlines as airfare of the returnee from a basket fund proposed to be created with a very nominal amount from the sale of tickets. In fact, NATTA floated this idea of creating a basket fund on the insurance model so that no agent would ever get penalized simply for issuing ticket to passengers.
The meeting though couldn’t draw any positive conclusion to the above proposition the issue has been left to the agents to decide and suggest NATTA the way forward to eliminate the problem.
