Travel industry, NCAA introduces ID card to tackle illegal agents, fraudsters
•Osinbajo to launch NTPIC June 26
THE travel industry, in partnership with the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), is set to launch a mode of identification for genuine travel agencies and agents in the air travel sub-sector.
The purpose-built identification card, known as the Nigerian Travel Practitioners Identification Card (NTPIC), is part of the efforts to sanitise the industry by exposing illegal operators and fraudsters waiting to defraud intending passengers.
And once the mandator y idenfication cards take effect on June 26, 2018, it becomes illegal for an unlicensed agent to sell tickets or members of the public to patronise such.
The NCAA 2006 Act designates the authority as the apex regulatory body of air travel in the countr y, including activities of the travel agencies that are the downstream sector of the aviation sector.
It will be recalled that the air travel business has lately been faced with one-toomany cases of travel agents defrauding intending passengers and organisations in excess of millions of naira.
President of the National Association of Nigeria Travel Agencies (NANTA), Bankole Bernard, said that the unwholesome episodes were embarrassments to genuine operators and country's image, forcing the stakeholders to the drawing board to find solution. Bankole, told reporters in Lagos that the identification card measure is to assist intending air tra vellers to identify genuine tra vel agents from fake, and to put a stop to the activities of frausters in the sector.
He disclosed that the Vice President will launch the card in Lagos on June 26, as a measure of the Federal Government's support for the initiative.
Bankole said: "We decided to embark on this project as the downstream sector of the aviation industry. More so, the government does not really understand our worth or the total number of the agencies that exist within the country.
"Again, our industr y is so porous; there is no exit or entry barrier . So , it has become an all-comers' business even for fraudsters. Three, we realised that some have now used tra vel agencies as a means of human trafficking, defrauding intending passengers and as a means of bastarding our name at the embassies,” he said.
The president, therefore, urged intending passengers to patronise genuine tra vel agencies to a void being defrauded, adding that passengers at the point of buying their tickets must insist that the operator show identification card to ascertain authenticity.
No fewer than 6000 tra vel agencies are registered with NANTA, out of which about 1000 have already applied for the NTPIC.
Vice president of NANTA, Lagos zone, Lola Adewole, said though fraud may not be completely eradicated in the industr y, it can be reduced to the minimum.