Travellers from Surat airport have been bombarding the social media with complaints about the lack of basic airport amenities such as wi-fi, clean drinking water, and the lack of pre-paid taxi service.
The Airports Authority of India (AAI) recently announced that it is extensively working towards holistic development of this international airport with a project cost of Rs 353 crore.
Pallav Bansal, a regular traveller, posted videos and photos on the social media wall of We Work for Working Airport (WWWAS)) around a week ago with a description of a drinking water dispenser giving out coloured water. However, airport officials denied this claim.
“Our officials have checked and there are no issues related to coloured drinking water. Clean drinking water is available,” said Aman Saini, airport director, Surat.
Around three weeks ago, another traveller Kaushik Das, had raised the issue of non-availability of wi-fi at the airport from his Twitter handle. Surat airport officials responded to him saying they have shared the feedback with the concerned team. However, there is still no working wi-fi at the airport.
Sanjay Jain, a member of WWWAS, said, “There are a number of issues related to basic facilities but no proper actions have been taken by the authorities. Due to unavailability of wi-fi many travelers face issues.”
Lack of pre-paid taxi service and ATMs is another issue flagge by passengers besides stinking toilets and rude behaviour of staff of different departments.
“No required actions have been taken by the airport authorities to install ATMs which are necessary at an international airport. There is no prepaid taxi service as well,” said Linesh Shah, a member of WWWAS.
“For wi-fi and pre-paid taxis, contractors are not coming forward despite multiple attempts. We are trying to provide these facilities,” said Saini.