ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT-2010/2011 (TAASL)

“A warm welcome to each one of you to the 36th Annual General Meeting of TAASL and the 23rd Annual General Meeting of IATA-AASL. I’m glad to see a good attendance at the AGM this evening. The motto of our association is upholding unity, creating diversity, maintaining sustainability and accounting for transparency and I would to emphasize on each one of these today.

It is our responsibility to keep the respect of the industry and lift the rating of the industry. Thousands of students sit for the Advanced level examination; few enter the medical faculty, few enter the engineering faculty, few enter the law faculty and the rest physical science, bio science, business management and arts faculty. The few who could not enter the university may choose to do CIMA, ACCA, CIM or computer science at private institutions. Rest of the students tries to find jobs in the Govt. sector. And not many are interested in getting into the Travel Trade. There are a few institutes conducting travel and ticketing courses and I had have chats with 3 of them & realized the best time to advertise is not after the A/L exams, but its better after the O/L exam. They call for the application for the basic fares and ticketing course with English, Mathematics Credit whereas they can’t get enough enrolment for the class. The key issues from a human resource perspective are;

1) Low starting salary
2) Poor salary increment
3) Irregular bonuses
4) Lack of assistance given for their education

We have not sustained enough for our staff as well as for ourselves. We are just working for a profit of Rs. 50- 100. We are always in fear if we quote more we may lose business. We are to be blamed for our lack of transparency and unity. Our industry is a service industry and service providers are taking advantage of it by taking decisions over night and implementing these decisions on us by force the very next day. This is due to the lack of unity in the industry. Therefore, we all have to get together to formulate a marketing development program to maintain ourselves, and join hands together and sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) among ourselves.

I firmly believe that as an industry, we need to band together and strengthen our stance when it comes to our businesses in order t secure what is best for the growth of the organization and its employees. There is a need for unity when it comes to policy decisions and if this fraternity works together for one common goal, the benefits would be numerous.

Last but not the least; I would like to end my speech stressing on the key words once again:- UNITY, SUSTAINBAILITY and TRANSPARENCY.”

Thank you…