08 Oct 2020

The Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources Conservation and Tourism has started disbursing wage subsidy to the tourism sector.

In an interview, Minister Phildah Kereng said her ministry would use the P16 million that Germany recently donated.

She said the funds would assist community trusts that lost business due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Beneficiaries, Ms Kereng said, would include those in the Kavango Zambezi Trans-Frontier Conservation Area (KAZA-TFCA), which covered  Okavango, Chobe and parts of Makgadikgadi.

“We are paying employees of those community trusts to assist them to come up with income generating projects outside tourism,” she said. The initiative, she said, was also meant to diversify communities’ revenue base from tourism to other forms of income generation.

Ms Kereng indicated that part of the money would be used to fund infrastructural development projects within the tourism sector.

Such projects, she said, included expansion of the Lake Ngami Charcoal production, poultry for Nata Community Trust as well as water purification and bottling by the Gwetsotshaa

Community Trust. She added that the activities would help create employment as well as keep staff under employment.

Furthermore, Ms Kereng said part of the wage subsidy would also benefit community guides, mokoro polars, freelance tourist operators and chefs who were not part of the formal employment within the tourism industry.

So far, the ministry had identified a total of 528 beneficiaries to benefit from the wage subsidy. ENDS