GIA: A can of worms

Accra-based newspaper, the dailyEXPRESS says its ongoing investigations into the operations of the staggering Ghana International Airlines has unearthed very worrying details of malfeasance, deceit and incompetence which has resulted in the airline loosing millions of dollars.

Both former and current officials of the airline confirmed during enquiries that the airline has never received any payment for tickets bought by passengers online. According to the dailyEXPRESS, passengers who bought tickets from the GIA website traveled for free, costing the airline to lose in excess of $450,000.


This was because contrary to claims about being e-ticketing complaint, GIA did not have an online merchant account and could therefore not collect credit and debit card payments made online.


The airline?s bogus website also made it possible for some company officials in charge of the ticketing and reservations system to sell tickets directly without accounting to the company.


?Things were very bad, because not only were the tickets been sold from laptops, passengers were booked by this senior official of the airline for just one-way, and many of them angry because they could not get their return flights reported the GIA to ATOL & IATA.? This was the response of a former senior official of the GIA to a question about whether it is true that one of his colleagues sold tickets from his laptop in a London hotel last December.


A GIA-USA source speaking to the dailyEXPRESS admitted these anomalies, adding that the management team accepts blame for the huge losses, but argues that ?the attempt to permanently stop these acts is what resulted in the April 7 action for which the airline is now hitting the ground.?


Though the source disagrees that these developments manifest incompetence on the part of the GIA management team (which as per the contract is GIA-USA), dailyEXPRESS found out that the team allowed these company- collapsing decisions and developments to continue without a fast track approach to stop them.

Further enquiries have revealed that the matter was reported to the Airport police by the Brian Presbury led management and investigations are still ongoing.


But latest checks at the GIA indicate that the person who was allegedly at the centre of all these allegations, loss of revenue and funds is back at post working with the Azu Mate-led team.


A source said ?now that he is back we are not sure if the investigations will proceed, but the matter is with the police? all the points you raised are true and as managers we cannot deny that they happened, but we were almost through with repairing and cutting the losses.?


The ineffective ticketing system and the ability of some persons to manipulate the Raddix system led to the loss of huge sums of money including a number of travel agencies and charter flight arrangers who refused to pay the airline.


For all these, the 30% shareholder GIA-USA cannot be extricated from blame, but it is also true that the sacking of the management team and appointment of Board Chairman Azu Mate has led to a somewhat permanent halt to any investigations started by the Brian Presbury management.


Coming up in the next edition, who is been accused of all these allegations and how did the Board of Directors react to this developments? And is the Azu Mate team sure of its West African route expansion when it has sacked almost all the staff of the airline who were been trained and prepared for the route expansion program?