Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, June 14: All Jammu Hotels and Lodges Association (AJHLA) held a meeting through video conferencing.
In the meeting, the Chairman of the Association Inderjeet Khajuria has expressed great concern over ignoring tourism sector from the purview of any relief package announced by the Government of India.
According to Pawan Gupta, President of the Association, tourism sector is completely shocked and dismayed after listening the Union Minister of Finance patiently for continuously five days and getting no relief package/respite from the Government. Tourism sector was expecting immediate as well as long term relief packages as it is only sector whose condition deteriorated from bad to worse by COVID pandemic coupled with ongoing lockdown. Hotel industry was already on ventilator due to extension of train service from Jammu to Katra and since August 2019 when Jammu and Kashmir state was bifurcated into two Union Territories with the abrogation of Article 370, he added.
“Government of India is showing very little concern towards tourism sector which was the backbone of J&K’s economy and major job creator giving employment to more than 90 percent to local people spreading all over the regions of Union Territory”, he stated.
He informed that their repeated appeals for revival of tourism to J&K as well as Central Government administration fell on deaf ears and hopes of its revival dashed to the ground after hearing the final announcement of Rs 20 lakh crore package distribution.
The Association once again has appealed to the Government to come to their rescue by giving instant relief to starving hotel industry on the same pattern as given in the year 2003 during the regime of Prime Minister late Atal Behari Vajpayee and formulating effective plan/fruitful policy to bring back to its original track and glory.
Other office bearers present were HS Manhas, Anil Khajuria, Pritam Sharma, Baldev Raj, Sunil Suri, Swarn Singh, Sankul Gupta, Manpreet Singh and ML Sharma.
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