Spanish tickets fox local resident

PERHAPS looking to add a certain elegancia (Spanish for flair) to the dour world of parking lots, Hosea Kutako Airport has truly gone cosmopolitan by presenting customers with tickets in Spanish.

Local resident Philip Ford discovered the foreign language after a recent visit to the airport. He noticed the disclaimers on the tickets were printed in the Mediterranean language, with ‘no sign of the official language of Namibia’.The telephone number printed next to the writing leads to a cheery Buenas Dias from a parking equipment manufacturer in the Canary Islands.When contacted for comment on the Spanish fiasco, Namibian Airports Company (NAC) spokesperson Vicky Raimond-Muranda responded that ‘the equipment for the short-term parking facility was provided through a Spanish project, hence the Spanish on the tickets’. ‘These are the initial tickets received with the Spanish-manufactured parking equipment,’ she went on to say.Raimond-Muranda said the stock of Spanish tickets needs to be depleted before ‘the next batch of tickets will be procured locally which will be in English’.But Ford’s irritation did not end with the Spanish tickets. ‘Hosea Kutako International Airport is sure to have the most expensive uncovered parking facility in the world at N$6 as the cheapest fee, even for a measly ten minutes …,’ he went on. ‘To add insult to injury, the available area nearest the terminal has now been halved to accommodate even more rental cars,’ Ford continued.This means ‘people now have to walk through the hot sun’ to get to public parking, which has been moved further away. Ford said the general situation at the airport had ‘irked him for months’.The parking lot is run by the NAC, which also collects the revenue from its operation.On the prices of the parking lot, which are considerably higher than those in town, Raimond-Muranda said: ‘The public short-term parking facility at Hosea Kutako International Airport is exposed to harsh weather conditions and would need more upkeep than the enclosed parking facilities within the city centre.’She said the recent upgrade of the facility had meant a price hike had been necessary ‘to combat the effects of inflation and to recoup the investment’.She pointed out that before the recent hike, the rates at the car park had not been adjusted for five years. In comparison, an hour’s open parking at the airport in Port Elizabeth, which is similar in size to Hosea Kutako, also costs N$6. On the decreased parking space close to the building, Muranda said ‘only 20 parking bays that were underutilised’ had recently been reallocated to rental cars. One can only hope the Spanish trend continues at Hosea Kutako, as we might then soon see delicious tapas (small snacks) in the airport restaurant and flamenco dancing on the conveyor belts.