Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Jan 2: All Jammu Hotels & Lodges Association (AJHLA) has decided to boycott pre-budget meeting with Minister for Finance, Hasib H Drabu, scheduled to be held on January 3, 2016, as a mark of protest against the constant neglect of Jammu tourism with least hope of its development as independent tourist destination.
Addressing a meeting, Inderjeet Khajuria, president AJHLA, explained that despite declaring hotels as Industry under Industrial Policy 1995 and repeated pleas of the Association for charging power tariff from the hotel industry at industrial tariff rates as per MSME norms, the Finance Minister has not taken this issue seriously.
“It seems that the BJP-PDP coalition Government is not serious in developing Jammu as independent tourist destination in view of the fact that it has adopted PPP mode in the execution of the proposed new tourism projects. The past experience reveals that the projects allotted to PPP could not even reach the starting stage in view of the fact that no agency came forward to bid for the same and it was mere wastage of time and labour resulting in unwanted delay as it happened in the case of multi-storied shopping-cum-parking complex at General Bus Stand, Jammu, which was delayed by more than three years as no agency came forward to bid for it simply due to PPP mode,” Mr Khajuria further said.
Mr Khajuria alleged that intentions of the Government seemed to be doubtful as on ground no tangible progress was visible on all the Jammu tourism projects.
The meeting was attended by Pawan Gupta, H S Manhas, Baldev Raj, Sunil Suri, Bikram Singh, Kamal Kishore, Swaran Singh Manhas, Sunil Bakshi, Gurdarshan Singh, Vinod Jandyal and others.
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