‘Govt, act fast or face consequences’

The South African government needs to
“act fast or face the consequences” of
the new immigration regulations, which
have resulted in a worrying decline in
passengers visiting the country.
This was the opinion of panellists
discussing barriers to growth in Africa
at the recent Routes 2015 aviation
conference, which was held in Durban.
The message was that while there
remains a lot of potential for Africa,
carriers are struggling for profitability
and governments need to relook at
their policies to assist carriers and
boost tourism. “Clearly, we have to
respect the rights of sovereign states
to consider security and immigration
concerns. I fully appreciate the
South African government’s desire to
address the very serious issue of child
trafficking but there are other tried-andtested
techniques and approaches
to doing this,” said David Scowsill,
president and ceo of the World Travel
and Tourism Council. He added that
if South Africa wanted to return to
growth in terms of tourism, something
would need to be done urgently. “I’m
delighted that the President has set up a committee to look at this
but it needs to move fast
because the numbers are
declining.”
Vp of Iata, Raphael
Kuuchi, said while some
airlines in SA were doing
well, quite a few were
not. “Yet you see the
government putting in rules
and regulations to stifle
travel.”
The panel agreed that
airlines and the industry
would need to speak with a
united voice if they wanted
to liaise constructively with
government on the new
regulations.
“The biggest problem
we’ve had is that we have a
lot of bodies in South Africa
that are making noise
but are not addressing
the problems with the
right stakeholders,” Inati
Ntshanga, ceo of SA
Express, said. He added
that the travel industry
needed to start working
in a more co-ordinated
fashion. “We’ve had
organisations that go
and meet the Minister,
but before a solution is
reached, they are turning to
the press, saying how this
is not going to work.”
Chris Zweigenthal, ce
of Aasa, added that work
would need to be done for
industry to get together
and compile the right facts
and figures. “You can do
everything you want with
statistics but we need
to get the right message
across. I don’t think we
get the right message
uniformly across and
that could be an issue
that is stifling progress.”
He added that the
deputy minister of Home
Affairs had complained
that the industry was
“unco-ordinated” and
“fragmented”.
Tebogo Mekgoe, coo
of Acsa, agreed, adding
that one of the biggest
challenges was that the
interpretation of data could
be ambiguous. “Often
when you get into meetings
where you’re speaking with
government officials, you
get different messages
coming from different
entities looking at similar
data.” Industry needs to
look at how it shares the
right data.