Staff Correspondent
Port Blair, Feb 28: Neil Island one of the busiest Tourism hubs of these Islands is witnessing strange but true incidents where ferry boat tickets are sold to invisible people. No traces of such people can be seen in queue and near the counter for whom the tickets are been booked as soon as the counter open, keeping the General Populace in wait.
Recently Andaman Sheekha had raised the Issue of black marketing of Ship Tickets from Neil Island ticketing counter and now the booking agents and the tour operators have come up with a new idea of buying and selling boat tickets in black.
The booking requisition forms that one gives to the booking agent requesting him to issue a ticket is now filled and kept under stones at the ticketing counter in Neil Island by the tour operators by 6.00 to 7.00 am. The booking agents as soon as they come to open the counter for issuing the tickets fetch the booking requisition from kept under the stones by the travel agents and book their tickets first. The General Public standing in lines are issued tickets only after the booking of the tickets of the travel agents are completed and many of the times they even don’t get tickets even after standing for hours in queue waiting for their turn to come.
Each requisition form that the travel agents keep under the stones contains minimum four ticket requisition and numerous requisition forms were found by Andaman Sheekha team when they reached the site for inspecting whether the news is true. Andaman Sheekha has exclusive photograph of the requisition forms kept under the stones which is sufficient evidence for proving the misdoing of the booking agents of the Directorate of Shipping Services.
The Directorate of Shipping Services should check on such misdoing by their staffs and take appropriate action against them as the black marketing of ship tickets is increasing day by day and the general public is suffering due to Non-Availability of tickets.
