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Seriously now…
DEAR EDITOR,
I am responding to Ms. Gillian Burton-Persaud on the assumption that the remarks attributed to her in the Saturday December 23 edition of the Kaieteur News, under the caption ‘Gov’t needs to take tourism more seriously’ are a true and accurate reflection of her statements. Also, the statements made, directly refer to the period of time of my stewardship as Director General in the Department of Tourism, and as such, I am very close to the issues addressed (or mentioned) by Ms. Burton-Persaud.
The most charitable inference that I draw from the statements of the honourable MP is that tourism is a sector that needs to be regarded with seriousness at every national level because of its ‘potential economic benefits.’ With that few would take issue. However, a number of murky and inaccurate assertions follow, that weaken the quality of the contribution of the honourable MP. These I shall address in detail.
Possibly with more of an interest in light-hearted banter rather than truth, Ms. Burton-Persaud asserts that “the only bird watching is along the East Coast with the men standing at the corner with their bird cages.”
Local Birding enthusiasts/guides such as Wally Prince, Ron Allicock, Nadir Allie, Gary Sway, Andy Narine and Luke Johnson, with their birding tours to the Botanic Gardens, up the Mahaica and Abary rivers, Iwokrama, Karanambu, Sloth Island, Canje creek, just to name a few, must be aghast and mortified at such an utterance in Parliament.
There are colleagues of Ms. Gillian Burton-Persaud on the Opposition benches who know better than she asserts in her presentation.
With another broad sweep of the brush, the honourable Member declares “Eco-tourism, adventure tourism, community-based tourism, wildlife, sports tourism, yachting, heritage and cultural tourism were all initiatives in the 2015 Budget, but again, nothing happened.”
In other words, Ms. Gillian Burton-Persaud would have us believe that for the past two years our green destination attractions were neither marketed and promoted internationally nor visited; that yachts have stopped coming; that a Sports Tourism initiative that produced a Sports Tourism Guide and influenced the very successful Pan-Am Hockey tournament in October never happened; or that the communities of Surama and Warapoka have been slumbering in hammocks and not hosting tourists, as indeed they have been; or that Guyana was not declared ‘among the 12 emergent travel destinations in 2016’ by Business Insider. One continues to be astonished.
In similar loose vein, the honourable MP reminds us that “There was $329M set aside for tourism in 2017. It was intended to fund the implementation of the National Tourism Policy; promote the Guyana Shield as a tourism production; strengthen Diaspora relations; develop and exploit tourism opportunities and intensify training in hospitalities.”
The implementation of the Tourism Policy is not a project that ends in calendar year 2017 rather it is a 5-year Policy that sets the parameters within which tourism development would take place. Tourism in the Guiana Shield (and please bear in mind the soon to be signed Tourism Accord between Guyana and Suriname), Diasporic Tourism (do ask the Guyanese-Canadians about the recently formed Guyana-Canada Tourism Council) and Hospitality Training (land finally identified for the Hospitality School) are some of the aspects addressed in the Policy document.
Editor, I have spent more time than I intended on the statements of the honourable MP, but I do believe that being serious about tourism obliges us to be as close as we can to the truth and the realities as they exist and unfold on the ground. Parliamentary privilege in no way weakens or diminishes that responsibility.
Further, this critique will indeed strengthen the commitment of the Department of Tourism and the Guyana Tourism Authority to deliver the kind of Destination Guyana envisaged by the National Tourism Policy.
Donald Sinclair
Director General
Department of Tourism
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