The Consumer Protection Council, CPC has protested the reported attempts by officials of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAAN, to force passengers arriving the Murtala Muhammad International Airport, MMIA, Lagos to pay a N2, 000 charges on all checked-in luggage. This is contained in a statement issued yesterday in Abuja by the Deputy Director, Public Relations of CPC, Mr. Abiodun Obimuyiwa. The Council, in a letter signed by its Director General, Mrs. Dupe Atoki, drew the attention of FAAN to the consumer outcry that greeted the indiscriminate implementation of the luggage charge, urging it to urgently review and take decisive steps to assuage the situation. Atoki said it is worrisome “that while FAAN, as monitored in the media, is saying that the N2000 luggage charge was not imposed on all passengers, but strictly on cargo agents who use passenger planes to transport their cargo at the airport, passengers, who are not cargo agents, have complained about being indiscriminately charged for their checked-in luggage by FAAN officials”. The director general blamed the situation on “the seeming inexistence of proper guidelines that clearly differentiate a “cargo agent” from an ordinary passenger”. She advised FAAN should “review the implementation of the N2, 000 (Two Thousand Naira) luggage charges, in order to clearly delineate and adequately sensitise the affected group, and at the same time put in place a seamless implementation framework that will not pose any problem to ordinary consumers of air transport services”. “However, it is a core tenet of market liberalisation that producers and service providers would at all times ensure transparency and fairness in the marketplace by putting in place clear terms and conditions for products and services, orientating their officials/agents on their interface with consumers, educating consumers on products and services and giving them adequate notice for anticipated changes in operational environments”, it stated. While emphasising that adherence to the principles of transparent conduct is “more crucial and inescapable when the service provider is a government agency like FAAN”, the Council observed that “the aviation industry is global in nature, hence operators are obliged to synchronise their operations with the global best practices of transparency, consistency and predictability”. The Council urged FAAN to urgently attend to the matter with a view to putting an end to the avoidable confusion and outcry generated by the implemnation of the luggage charge in order to sustain the gains being made by the present administration in the on-going transformation of the aviation sector.
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