129 travel agents face action

JALANDHAR:AS many as 129 travel agents were found carrying out their trade illegally in the district, and now they could soon face police action.

Disclosing this here, additional deputy commissioner Jasbir Singh said, “We have submitted the list of all the 129 agents to the police commisionerate office and requested them to take necessary action.” Under the ongoing registration process under the Punjab Prevention of Human Smuggling Act 2012, the administration had received over 500 applications from travel agents across the district, out of which 129 have been found having no requisite documents for carrying out the trade in a legal manner.

To curb the mushrooming of unauthorised travel agents, the administration had issued notices to all agents, including licensed and those whose applications for licence were pending with the administration, to submit the fees of all the services that they claim to render to the people in March.

As per estimate, at present, the district has over 750 travel agent and only around 275 have licences.

Under the Punjab Prevention of Human Smuggling (Amendment) Rules, 2014, the licence documents that travel agents obtain should also mention the services like the travel agency, coaching institutions of IELTS, consultancy, ticketing agents, general sales agents, if they provide any of this or all.

As per the new rules, the travel agents now have to submit fees for all the individual services that they claim to provide to the people.