•Says diplomatic negotiations to release detained passengers ongoing
By Chinelo Obogo
Ethiopian Airlines has denied allegations of maltreatment of Nigerian passengers who transit through Addis Ababa, the country’s capital city.
The Group Chief Executive Officer of Ethiopian Air, Mr, Mesfin Tasew, who met with Nigerian aviation reporters in Addis Ababa recently, said the airline has made efforts to educate its passengers on Ethiopia’s rules concerning declaration of valuables upon arrival at the capital city, but that some passengers still refuse to comply.
He said that like any other airport, as passengers’ transit through Bole International terminal, they undergo screening and in the process, there are certain checks that have to be done by the national security of the country and that sometimes, they find people who are not in compliance with both the national regulation and international security practices.
“About 70 per cent of our passengers transit through Addis Ababa. It’s only 30 per cent that come in and go out and the transit time in Addis Ababa varies from 20 minutes. Some passengers just disembark one aircraft and board the next aircraft in 20 minutes. Sometimes it may go up to four hours but most are within a range of one hour and two hours. If some passengers are found carrying drugs, they will not be allowed to continue their flight. The security people will take them under custody. If they are found carrying weapons without permission, they do the same thing until they investigate and see that it is an approved weapon.
“The second problem that we witness is that some people carry a lot of valuables like gold in large sizes or dollars in millions of cash in their bags. If they are transiting without coming to Addis, the security won’t touch them. They can carry the money because it’s their money, they are not coming to the country. However, if they want to pass a day or a night to get their connection and they have to come out to this hotel, the national regulation says that all passengers carrying over 10,000 dollars or its equivalent or gold beyond the normal ornaments, have to declare it in customs on arrival.
You have to tell them, oh, I am carrying $30,000. They may ask you, where is it? You can take it out from your bag, show them. You sign on a piece of paper and the next morning when you go out, as you pass through the X-ray, there are custom people there. If they see it, they ask if you have the permit to carry this money. If you show that paper, nothing will happen.
“You are free to carry out your money, even if it is a million dollar. All they are asking is that you declare it. If you are not declaring it, they assume that it’s not your money and that somebody in the city has given it to you, so it is illegal to take out this money. They confiscate the money. If you don’t declare it during customs, you will have problems taking it out. If you have money, then you have to declare it and they give you a receipt. If you don’t do that, then that is a problem. But some people don’t declare that they are carrying a lot of money, then when they go out, the customs people identify it and take the money, then they put the people under police custody because they have violated Ethiopian government rules. It has nothing to do with Ethiopian airlines,” he said.
Tasew said that some passengers say the reason they don’t declare the cash they carry is because they are afraid that if they declare it, people will follow them to the hotel and steal the money and that he discussed this issue with the Nigeria’s former Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika and told him that each hotel room has a safe box where they can put their valuables, including money, and bring the key.
He said: “We established a hotel within the terminal where passengers can sleep and which has the same standard to hotels so that the passengers can stay in those hotels with their valuables, without declaring because they don’t pass through customs. I intentionally showed ex-minister Hadi how the rooms within the terminal look like and he was impressed. We tell passengers that they have the option of staying in the rooms at the airport and some people are doing it. Today we have 99 rooms, sometimes 60, 70, 80 people stay there.
“So, we have tried our best regarding the many cases of confiscations. We don’t know what else we can do. We try to educate our passengers, we give them the options but some people still don’t follow that and are caught when they go out. We hear that some people from Nigeria and other countries are still under police custody, but discussions are going on at government level, at diplomatic level. We hope we see some issues are being resolved. We had to call about eight ambassadors from West Africa to my office including Nigeria, Togo, Senegal and Ghana. So, they expressed their concern, like what you did, and I explained this to them. It is unfortunate we don’t want any passenger to be inconvenienced as they pass through Addis Ababa airport, but some things are beyond our control.”