Ngorongoro under fire for faulty gate payment system

Tour operators have expressed concern that the Ngorongoro conservation area authority (NCAA) electronic payment system is the worst electronic device in use anywhere in the country’s multi-million-dollar tourism industry.

The NCAA introduced an electronic payment structure in 2011  complete with a payment card  to ease the burden of tour operators having to carry colossal amounts of cash and save time at the gates. But four years down the line now, the consumers say the system is working exactly the opposite way.

Many tour operators now say that unlike the system adopted by the Tanzania National Parks (TANAPA), which one can top up through any CRDB and Exim bank branches across the country, the NCAA structure remains tardy.

“The NCAA system is so complex that there’s always a queue of tourists,” says Joseph Mwema, Managing Director of the Tomodachi Tour Company.

Specifically, Mwema says NCAA doesn’t accept master or credit cards for payment of entry fees, and doesn’t have any online top-up, so clients have ta deposit the cash and then take the bank slips to the NCAA offices in Arusha for card top-up, consuming a lot of time.

According to Ephata Nanyaro, an experienced tour guide, the NCAA structure lacks transparency and is “unnecessarily time consuming.”

For example, Nanyaro says, users cannot access the balance online, and that the NCAA machines do not generate balance statements; it also doesn’t have any ‘hot line’ in case of any defaults  -- except at the head offices in Arusha.

“ … in case of any loss of the NCAA card or insufficient loaded cash on their card, there’s no way anyone can pay the gate fees… this is boring … and tourists have been subjected to this for the past four years,” he noted.

Tour operators suggest that the NCAA electronic payment system should be liberalized to facilitate online top-up, for instance, through CRDB bank branches across the country.
  
“There is need to extend the working hours of Arusha card centre to seven hours on Saturdays and five hours on Sundays. Lately, we have had lots of last-minute safari bookings … most of them fall on these days, so something must be done to accommodate this demand,” says Jackpot Tours Director Andrew Malalika.

Malalika also says that there’s need for more cash desks specifically at the Loduare Gate during high season to reduce congestion, and that NCAA cashiers and rangers need to be trained on customer care and cross-cultural values to cater for their diverse clients.

The tour operators also demand that the NCAA should install what they call ‘point of sale (POS)’ machines that accept both VISA and MasterCard  as is the case with TANAPA   at all its gates to save time for the tourists. 

Contacted for comment, the NCAA Manager responsible for planning and finance, Joseph Mshana maintained that the tour operators themselves should update their smart cards at the NCAA Information Office at Boma Road in Arusha. 

The NCAA has also opened another office at Karatu town where the tour operators could easily submit bank pay-in slips.

The NCAA handles nearly 50,000 tourists every year  who pay some $32m between them.