Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Dec 12: All Jammu Hotels and Lodges Association (AJHLA) held a meeting.
In the meeting, the Chairman of the Association Inderjeet Khajuria has expressed serious concern over the plight of people dependent upon tourism sector even after unlock phases whose financial condition is deteriorating from bad to worse mainly due to zero business coupled with impact of COVID pandemic and discriminatory attitude of Government towards Jammu region even after forming separate Union Territories of J&K and Ladakh out of earlier Jammu and Kashmir State.
Pawan Gupta, President of the association expressed deep concern and dismay over the neglect of tourism sector despite having immense potential in Jammu region. Government is showing very little concern in revival and promotion of tourism which can be gauged from the fact that a number of pipeline mega projects failed to see the daylight even after spending crores of rupees.
He further added that the people of Jammu were expecting a lot from the Government, particularly the start of work on new attractive projects such as development of Ambaran Buddhist site at Akhnoor, new lover site of Sohni-Mahiwal at Hamirpur Sidhar, Khour, development of Jhajjar Kotli complex, etc, which would go long way in tapping the pilgrims of Shri Mata Vaishno Devi and tourists of J&K and Himachal Pradesh and will help in improving the economy of Jammu region.
Gupta further added that newly carved out union territory, Ladakh is fortunate enough to have a number of new schemes for the promotion of the tourism in UT, especially home stay policy whereas the same benefit already granted to J&K is being snatched by the administration, creating hurdles during registration/renewal of licences of existing hotels.
The Association has appealed to the Government to formulate viable policy/plans to save the shattered tourist sector especially hotel industry.
Other office bearers present in the meeting were ML Sharma, Pritam Sharma, Anil Khajuria, HS Manhas, Baldev Raj, Sunil Suri, Swarn Singh, Sankul Gupta, Manpreet Singh and Nishant Gupta.
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