SHILLONG, JUNE 30: The state government on Friday released the Meghalaya Tourism Policy, 2023 which seeks to make the tourism sector a game changer for the state.
The policy was released by the Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma in presence of Tourism Minister Paul Lyngdoh at a function held at the State Convention.
“With the blessing of the chief minister, we have made public the new Meghalaya Tourism Policy 2023 which broadly has two sections – one is the vision statement core guidance principles and two the parts which deals with the thrust areas. We have identified 10 thrust areas under this policy which will be guiding the policy of the route trajectory of tourism in Meghalaya,” Lyngdoh told reporters.
Stating that the government will play the role of a leader and a guide, the minister said, “But again we also need the support of all cross section of all stakeholders. We need this policy because we want to encourage the youths in tourism in a planned manner and not in a haphazard manner and this is something doable because tourism is growing now.”
Informing that there has been an increase in the footfalls of tourists post the Covid pandemic, Lyngdoh said the state is having closed to around 15 lakhs visitors including foreign tourists.
Asserting that the tourism sector will definitely be a game changer for the state, Lyngdoh said, “Because how much we can dwell on the reservation policy as we know that opportunities in the government sector are dwindling. And in fact there is a large alarming number of 60,000 youths who join market employment every year and it is a huge number and unless we identify, encourage, strengthen tourism as a sector, we see that opportunities in the public sector have become very marginalized.”
“Therefore, this is a very important step that the government has taken and we are confident that with the youth’s population that we have, the soft skills that we have, Meghalaya is headed to a far brighter day ahead if we encourage tourism in a bigger way,” he added.
Lyngdoh also informed that the chief minister and himself had also launched a fleet of 16 tourism vehicles today.
He informed the government will also launch another 50 tourism vehicles in the next two months adding “We plan to encourage about 500 such vehicles to be provided to different players, most of them are young people belonging to different tourism promotion societies.”
By Our Reporter
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