06 May 2018

Deputy permanent secretary in the Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources Conservation and Tourism, Mr Felix Monggae has encouraged the tourism sector players to utilise the training levy.

Speaking at this year’s Hospitality and Tourism Association of Botswana (HATAB) conference held in Maun on May 4, Mr Monggae indicated that the tourism training levy had over P17 million available to be used.

He said only 3 033 personnel had thus far benefited from it.

 “There are issues of sub-standard service in the tourism industry yet the training levy is aimed to help tourism operators address such by offering training in various skills in the tourism and hospitality,” he said.

Mr Monggae also informed delegates that the ministry would host a Tourism Pitso this year to give tourism players a platform to share issues affecting their industry. He noted that the tourism sector was crucial owing to its contribution to the development of the country.

According to the Tourism Satellite Account of 2016, he said the tourism sector contributed P7.7 billion to the economy from arrivals of about 1.9 million and 1.7 million tourists in 2016 and 2015 respectively.

Also, he told delegates that the tourism licensing encouraged citizen participation and hence about 1 600 licensed tourism entities were recorded by January this year with 1 177 citizens only, 256 joint ventures and 254 non-citizens. Ends