The pitiful predicament of Dhaka airport
There's a saying that one gets a good sense of a country simply by stepping into its airport. Let alone countries of the developed world, just look closer home at Bhutan or Sri Lanka. The moment you get down at Bhutan's Paro airport, you'll understand that there is no chaos, no hustle and bustle and no meaningless squalor in the country. The airport is friendly, as if welcoming you with a warm smile.
Alight at Colombo and you'll find the airport clean, spic and span. The toilets are spotless and everything runs in perfect order. You can take a prepaid taxi anywhere, even at 1am in the night, and reach your destination safely at no exorbitant cost. Half an hour in the airport is more than enough to apprise you of the country's progress in education, sports and all social indicators.
Kolkata's Netaji airport used to be crowed, congested and bustling. Now it is a massive building with plenty of space and everything runs like clockwork. Once you go through immigration to the baggage counter, your suitcases will be waiting for you.
Now let's look at Shahjalal International Airport. It's a scary scene. If you have been there as a passenger, that's one experience you would gladly forget. From a glimpse of the crowds thronging outside, one would think it's an amusement park (though anxiety is more on the minds of the people than recreation).
The pressure has increased on the airport manifold since it started 30 or 35 years ago. But it is so rife with mismanagement that one wonders if there is any management there at all. There is a total lack of professionalism and passenger service.
The toilets in the airport are unclean, filled with a stench and in many cases, unusable. The three-storeyed parking lot is a syndicate den where there is no guarantee you will find a place to park your vehicle.
If you have come from abroad and have no car to pick you up, finding a taxi or CNG-run auto-rickshaw is like a lottery. If you are lucky enough to get a vehicle, a 400 taka fare will cost you many times more.
Just step inside the parking lot I mentioned. Filth is strewn everywhere. The people who run this airport don't give two hoots about cleanliness.
Why will an international airport be in this state? In winter it is overridden with mosquitoes. Once when I went to the airport to pick someone up, I was bitten so much by mosquitoes that I wrote a letter to the civil aviation and tourism secretary. The situation hasn't changed. Since the airport is all about flying, perhaps the mosquitoes have some sort of rights there!
On 27 September this year I reached Dhaka airport from Singapore at 10:20 in the night. If the computers are running properly, it doesn't take too long at the immigration. That is a blessing. They could certainly reduce the time per passenger (in Singapore it is one minute), but even so, it is a relief. But the trouble is at the baggage belt. There was a huge pile of luggage alongside the next belt. The luggage had been released a few hours after the passengers had arrived. The passengers had left after an interminable wait.
It took half an hour before our baggage began to emerge. It was two hours by the time I collected my last piece of luggage. It has become a regular matter to wait for two hours or so to collect one's bags. The day before, a passenger took a 40-minute flight from Kolkata to wait two hours for luggage at Dhaka airport. About a month ago I went to the airport to pick up my wife who was coming in on an Emirates flight. I stood for two whole hours waiting for her and would have had to wait for another half an hour had a kindly police officer not taken me to his office to sit down.
If waiting for luggage is a hassle, it is even worse trying to get a trolley. On the 27th I had to actually go out of the airport to get a trolley. I had even mulled on going home since I had actually come out of the terminal building. Many others had thought the same way, I am told.
There is an explanation offered for this mismanagement: when four or five flights land at the same time, it is only natural that there is a certain amount of pressure. That is no excuse, not even a lame excuse.
Why do they use the word 'international' then? Is this Saidpur airport that two flights a week is enough? In Sri Lanka even if five flights land at the same time, it doesn't take more than half an hour to leave the airport with bag and baggage.
In Dhaka airport I noted that customs officers were trying their best to make things easier for passengers to exit. They say that the irate passengers demand an explanation from them about the delay in getting their luggage, sometimes even vent their anger upon them. That is only natural. After all, there is no place for them to lodge their complaints, not person in charge.
The Biman authorities are in charge of luggage handling, that is offloading the baggage from the aircraft and loading it on to the belt. If that is so, the passengers really have nothing to do other than grumble. On 30 September a daily ran headlines about Biman's unabated losses. It was said that the airlines has been running at a loss for 35 of its 42 years. The reasons given were uncontrolled corruption and politicisation as well as inefficient management. The ratio of cabin crew to passengers per flight is higher than any another airline, and still there is this state of mismanagement.
If Biman is so inept at handling luggage with such a large workforce, then the responsibility should be taken away from them. Handing the work over to the private sector will create trouble with the union, an experienced passenger tells me. But who gave the luggage handlers the right to make the passengers, and their relatives who have come to receive them, wait for hours on end? This mismanagement in fact is becoming the norm. A good shake down is needed to change things immediately.
In New York our prime minister called upon American businessmen to invest in Bangladesh. The commerce minister made a similar appeal to Asian businessmen. But when these businessmen come to Dhaka and have to wait for three hours to get their suitcases, all thoughts of investment will fly from their heads and they will be busy trying to get a return ticket to fly back immediately.
Some Singapore nationals had also come on the flight back from Singapore on 27 September. After waiting for an hour and a half for his luggage, I heard one of them ask someone next to him, "Who runs this airport?" There was anger and frustration in his voice. When he emerges, he may even ask, who runs Dhaka, or who runs the country?
This is only to be expected. After waiting for two or three hours in the airport and then emerging into the crowds, the noise, the pushing and the shoving, no one will for a minute mistakenly imagine we have anything to do with efficiency or management whatsoever.
Syed Manzurul Islam: Writer. Professor, Department of English, Dhaka University