Response from DGCA awaited
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I wrote an article on June 20, 2021, criticizing the blunder committed by the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) for issuing a circular on June 2, 2021 obliging airlines to collect departure and arrival fees from passengers, with a retroactive effect from June 1, noting that the decision was issued on June 2, and some airline offices were informed after one day and some after two days after the decision was issued.
The decision was also issued without the international code from the IATA, the sole competent body to demand collecting fees. In my article, I expected the intervention of the IATA office in Kuwait to stop enforcing the wrong decision, and this is what happened, as the Director-General of the Aviation Department was forced to postpone the implementation until July 1, 2021. This is an acknowledgment of the urgency in the issuance of the circular.
A few days later, the Director-General of the DGCA, Eng. Youssef Al-Fawzan, responded with an article from which we did not benefit, therefore I postponed my response to it until after July 1, 2021.
On July 1, the DGCA succeeded in obtaining the new international code from IATA for the new tax, and a circular was sent to the airlines with the code related to collecting of 3 dinars for each departure and two dinars for each arrival, but due to the confusion of the administration, some airlines companies were also confused.
There has been an amount of two dinars imposed on each ticket for a while, and therefore some airlines, and I think the Kuwait Airways is one of them, assumed that the new decision includes the old tax in addition to the amount of three dinars on each departure and two dinars for the arrival, and others understood the opposite.
There was confusion, as companies get five dinars for tickets (3+2) and others get seven dinars (2 old fees + 3+2) and the confusion continues until writing this article.
The DGCA administration also failed to answer important questions. Whoever bought his/her ticket 3 months ago to travel before July 1 and postponed travel until after that, will he/she be covered by the tax… and other questions.
Until DGCA responds, confusion will remain and public money will be lost. I really don’t know how a decision that was issued and published in the Official Gazette in January 2020 can remain until today incomplete and not properly applied!
And what are the new services and improvements to the airport building according to the general manager’s response of which I did not see anything when I left the airport for Beirut four days ago which justifies the imposition of this tax?
There are other questions that DGCA failed to answer, perhaps deliberately ignoring them and often due to inability to do so, refusing even to admit that approvals to repeat the postponement are an admission of the confusion of decisions.
Oh wise government, how long will these mentalities remain in the management of vital bodies, when there are dozens of highly qualified and experienced people sitting without work in their homes?
If the DGCA is weak with a small and almost empty airport building, what will happen when it receives the new airport building which is dozens of times more complex and huge than the current one?
e-mail: [email protected] Ahmad alsarraf
By Ahmad alsarraf
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