SANGAM

Paid leave may boost tourism: MoF

SANGAM PRASAIN
KATHMANDU, FEB 28 - The Ministry of Finance (MoF) is preparing bring forth a 'Paid Leave' package for civil servants aiming at promoting domestic tourism.

The government has kept the plan at a priority list.

Finance Secretary Krishna Hari Banskota said that the ministry was discussing the package initiative in order to promote domestic tourism and boost the upcoming Nepal Tourism Year 2011 (NTY-2011).

"It is not possible to implement the model immediately. However, we are mulling over the issue so that it can be launched next year," he said. According to him, firstly resource for the expenditure needs to be managed to implement the package.

Paid Leave in other countries is defined as a feature in some employee agreements that provide a 'resource' of hours that an employee can draw from to take time off from work and take leave to visit an inbound tourist across the country.

The initiative aims at promoting domestic tourism. The packages are implemented in most of the Asian and European countries where the government provides leave to its employees.

The World Tourism Organiation defines tourists as people who "travel to and stay in places outside their usual environment for more than 24 hours and not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes not related to the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the place visited". It could be either domestic or international. Under the domestic tourism promotion, paid leave has become a popular global leisure activity.

However, Nepal's tourism policy does not incorporate domestic visitors as tourists, said a travel entrepreneur.

If the paid leave is implemented, about 400,000 civil servants should be incorporated to these packages by the ministry paying them to go for visit. "Thus, this issue will take some time," Banskota added.

Tourism Ministry, Nepal Tourism Board and travel entrepreneurs had been requesting the government for necessary policy and programme of paid leave to promote domestic tourism for the last three years. "If the programme is implemented, it can give boost to the tourism sector even during off seasons," said Prachanda Man Shrestha, chief executive officer of NTB.

Arjun Sharma, president of Nepal Association of Tour and Travel Agents (NATTA) said that the programme could be implemented but executing the programme at one time was difficult. "It should be started from one of the largest profit earning public enterprises," he said.

Madhav Om Shrestha, executive director of Hotel Association of Nepal (HAN) said that they had been requesting the government several times for the paid leave packages and programmes. Government is also positive about providing paid leave to the civil servants, he said.