December 10: The work procedure for providing a 10-day tourism leave, announced by the government to promote domestic tourism to support the business affected by Covid-19, has been limited to draft. Although the draft of the procedure was prepared last September it has not been approved yet.

The Ministry of Culture, Tourism, and Civil Aviation has also delayed collecting feedback related to the draft from other ministries. One month after the draft was prepared, the ministry started seeking suggestions from all the ministries. Currently, only a few ministries have provided feedback on the draft procedure. 

Tek Narayan Poudel, joint spokesperson of the Ministry, said that a revised draft of the work procedure will be submitted to the Council of Ministers as soon as the ministry approves the suggestions received from other ministries.

However, he said that the suggestions would be collected soon, and the procedure would be passed and implemented within December. The government had announced this program in its budget speech on May 30. It took almost six months to prepare the draft of the work procedure.

Tourism entrepreneurs have become frustrated with the government for not implementing the plan to provide 10-day tourism leave to civil servants and other government employees as a relief to the tourism sector that has been worst affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Encouraged by the program brought by the government, the tourism entrepreneurs had come up with attractive packages accordingly. However, they say that the package did not work.

Even though hoteliers have made packages in collaboration with airline companies, they are disappointed that the programme has not been implemented, says Binayak Shah, senior vice president of the Hotel Association of Nepal (HAN). "The work procedure has not been finalized yet. Therefore, this program isn’t meaningful at all,” said Shah.

He said that the tourism sector requires domestic tourists at the moment as foreign tourists are not coming in large numbers as before.

Stating that the government had pledged to implement the programme soon after the announcement, Shah said that there is no possibility to move ahead as the government has not started the programme yet. He added that it is too late to implement the programme.

Chairman of the Talking Agencies Association of Nepal (TAAN), Khum Bahadur Subedi, complained that the government had given priority only to the plan but did not show seriousness in its implementation.

The packages and plans made by the trekking agencies for this purpose have been wasted, said Subedi.

The draft of the working procedure has provision to provide expenses even to a non-employee, i.e. a family member of the employee. 

During the budget announcement, the government had mentioned that civil servants as well as employees of public institutions and establishments will be provided tourism leave with an amount equal to 10 days' salary in order to promote domestic tourism.