Trained immigration officials to welcome incoming passengers

The passport authority of Saudi Arabia plans to appoint trained graduates at the departure and arrivals lounges at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh to provide better services to passengers, said Col. Badr Al-Malik, the official spokesman of Public Directorate for Passports. The department would also appointed such qualified hands in King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah to handle visitors of the Kingdom especially pilgrims, he said to Asharq-Al-Awsat Arabic daily. Khalid Al-Yusufi, a passenger to Jeddah from London said that some immigration officers in Jeddah airport were not used to dealing with passengers from a cultured and civilized society. “They must change their attitude urgently toward passengers,” he added. Al-Yusufi said he heard a British tourist express his astonishment on the immigration officials’ inability to communicate in different languages with travelers at the airport. The sign language is the only language at King Abdulaziz International Airport, he quoted the British tourist as saying. Salih bin Khamees Al-Zahrani, a retired colonel and one of the former officials of the immigration department, said that immigration counters are the gateway for road, sea and air passengers. In any country the first receivers of travelers are immigration officials. So they should be kind and able to receive people with smiles and soft words. If a travelers’ first experience is bitter, they would ask themselves, ‘If this is the beginning, what will the end be like?’ Al-Zahrani urged immigration officials to acquire proficiency in various languages and in computer knowledge. “The training is needed to keep smiling because it is difficult to find a man smiling over eight hours,” he said. “It is better to utter some polite words to the passengers, such as, ‘Thank God for a safe journey’, ‘We wish you a pleasant stay’ and ‘Welcome to your second home’, he said, indicating a need for financial rewards and incentives to officials, based on the hours they spent in training. Al-Zahrani noted the experience of Dubai in handling passengers with maximum care and speed. “The passport officials are supposed to have obtained a minimum level of education, which enable them to receive a lot of training courses,” he said. From arabnews