For the second day running passengers intending passengers who are supposed to travel through Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos with International Certificate for Vaccination popularly known as Yellow cards have not been able to do so due to the non –availability of the essential travel document, African Business Travel News (ABTN) has learnt.
When the news of the non-availability of the cards filtered in yesterday, our correspondent who visited the headquarters of the Nigeria Port Health Services, located near the Toll gate plaza on the access road between international and domestic terminals of the Lagos airport, discovered that many intending passengers who had met the required vaccination processes and could not be issued the travel were asked to come back for collection today.
The development forced many passengers who should had travel yesterday to postpone their flights till today.
Our correspondent who visited the facility around 3:30pm local time (14:30Hrs) on Tuesday reported that passengers were asked to come back for collection of their cards by 2:00pm (13:00) today, Wednesday.
Some of the passengers travelling to African and South American countries where the presentation of the cards were major requirement at border post for entry, expressed their disappointments over the inability of the Federal Ministry of Health to provide a card that costs less it less than N100 to produce but officially sold to passenger N1000.
The passengers who expressed the fear of missing their flights because the airlines would not check them in, without the presentation of the cards, called on concerned authorities to ensure the availability of the essential travel document by today.
The situation however, remained the same this morning when our correspondent visited the facility to check if the cards had arrived.
However, none of the senior officials of the facility was on hand to comment on the development. The Director, Port Health Services, Dr. Alex Okoh was not yet to arrived at facility as at 9: 00am when our correspondent left the facility this morning.
Meanwhile fears among passengers who have flights to catch between 1: 00pm and 2:00pm are more apprehensive about their fate at obtaining the cards for their trips.
However, when contacted at about 12 00 noon, when her telephone eventually went through, Alex Okoh who confirmed the short fall in supply of the cards at the facility explained that the procedures for the issuance of the cards that caused the gap noted.
“It is not that we didn’t have yellow cards to issue but what happened was that we have to follow the procedures for issuance. If you go back to the centre now you would notice that passengers have been issued with the cards,” Okoh explained.
It would be recalled that some years ago, a major diplomatic row almost occurred between Nigeria and South Africa when the federal government deported 28 South Africans in retaliation to what was considered as the harsh and unfriendly treatment meted out to 125 Nigerians deported by the South African authorities as a result of not possessing (or possessing alleged fake) Yellow Fever Vaccine cards, a public health document, which shows that bearers have been vaccinated against yellow fever.
