DUSHANBE, April 24, 2013, Asia-Plus — Representatives of the European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation (EUROCONTROL) have not yet arrived in Tajikistan because they have failed to get Tajik entry visa, a reliable source told Asia-Plus Wednesday afternoon.
According to him, they were supposed to arrive in Tajikistan on April 22 as consultants ahead of a visit of auditors from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
“EUROCONTROL specialists could make recommendations that would help the Tajik civil aviation authorities comply with the requirements and instructions of the ICAO auditors given during their last visit in 2008,” said the source. “EUROCONTROL specialists will arrive in Tajikistan only after communications between the consular office at Dushanbe International Airport and the MFA Consular Directorate will be restored.”
We will recall that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs says the issuance of entry visas at airport was temporarily suspended on April 20 for technical reasons – lack of communications between the consular office at Dushanbe International Airport and the MFA Consular Directorate. The work of the communications service system is expected to be restored by the next Monday, April 29.
Firouz Ishanqulov, the head of the civil aviation department, Ministry of Transport (MoT) says the visit of the ICAO auditors and the visit of representatives of the civil aviation of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) scheduled for late April have been postponed for uncertain period.
Meanwhile, an official source at a MoT says the UAE civilian authorities last year blacklisted two Tajik air transport companies –
Khatlon Air
and
Asia Airways
. “Inspection made at one of UAE’s airports within the Safety Assessment of Foreign Aircraft (SAFA) program last year revealed serious shortcomings in the civilian transport aircraft, Antonotov-26, registered in Tajikistan as belonging to
Khatlon Air
,” the source added.
According to some sources, Pakistani civil aviation authorities have also blacklisted transport aircraft belonging to Tajik air companies. All these cases have evoked serious concern of the ICAO and some Tajik experts note that the risk the ICAO may blacklist Tajikistan’s air companies is quite a high.
