Nepal creates short-term jobs for tourism workers amid COVID

KATHMANDU: With a large number of workers in the tourism industry rendered unemployed amid the devastating COVID-19 pandemic, the Nepal Tourism Board is implementing a programme to provide temporary employment to those who have lost their jobs.

Launched in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme, it is offering short-term employment to lower-level workers in the tourism sector by engaging them in the sanitisation and maintenance of tourism facilities, which include trekking routes and bridges along the trails.

On Tuesday, the tourism board started seeking proposals from local non-governmental organisations, cooperatives and community-based organisations with a view to having their participation in the programme, Xinhua news agency reported.

"We initially started the program early this year in just five locations," Dhananjay Regmi, chief executive officer of the tourism board, told Xinhua. "We're implementing this programme nationwide from the new 2021-22 fiscal year."

Nepal's new fiscal year began on July 16.

According to Regmi, the programme shall be carried out in all the rural municipalities of hilly and mountainous districts under a resource-sharing mechanism as well as in some rural municipalities of the southern plain districts.

"We aim to provide short-term employment to 1,600 tourism workers under this program being implemented under the sustainable tourism for livelihood recovery project," said Regmi. "We're also going to implement a separate program related to tourism infrastructure development in which additional tourism workers will be employed."(IANS)

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