TAFI To Launch Insurance Scheme By September: Ahmed

Charmaine Fernz - Mumbai

The Travel Agents Federation of India (TAFI) recently witnessed a change in guard in the managing committee, which is now headed by Zakir Ahmed. He took over as president of the association from Yatin Dosa. Having just undertaken the responsibility, Ahmed in an exclusive with Express Travel & Tourism spoke about his plans for the association in the coming year.

"To begin with, we would be launching two types of Insurance Schemes for our members by September 1, 2004. One would be a change from the existing joint bank guarantee scheme to an insurance scheme, wherein the premium would be 0.5 annually. While the other insurance scheme for members who want to enrol directly, would be 0.95 per cent annually. Both insurance schemes are being worked out at the moment. We are negotiating with basically three companies viz ICICI Lombard, TATA AIG and Bajaj Allianz and the premium would be based on the yearly turnover. The scheme has to be favourable to all parties, ie airlines, IATA and agents alike and hence necessary precautions have to be taken while devising the right plan," disclosed Ahmed.

Elaborating further, he said, "The association also needs to be organised well, wherein there has to be a good spread across all regions. To that effect, we would soon be opening new chapters in Chennai, Tamil Nadu and Punjab as well as activating existing chapters in Kochi and Hyderabad. Apart from this, a lot of issues need to be sorted out such as the on-going reduction of commissions, which is just one of them. Our member agents face other issues such as ADMs issued for no shows or even reissuing of tickets and agents are being forced to pay up for these no shows, which is no fault of theirs. An annual convention is certainly being considered which is long overdue but the dates and venue have not yet been decided. However, we could surely state that we are looking at having a convention early next year."