By Abdul Qadir Qureshi
(Pakistan News & Features Services)
The World Tourism Day (WTD) 2019 was celebrated in a befitting manner by the Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC) on September 27.
The seminar emphasized on the role of tourism in job creation, social inclusion and poverty alleviation all over the world as the experts shared their views.
It was attended by a large number of professionals from tourism sector, tour operators, travel agents, stakeholders and officers of public sector organizations engaged in tourism promotion.
Syed Intikhab Alam, Managing Director, PTDC in his opening remarks, spoke about the role of tourism in job creation as it held around 10% share of the total jobs in the global economy.
He was of the opinion that the initiatives taken by the present government would help achieve the targets of creating more jobs for women and youth in particular.
Malik Amin Aslam Khan, Advisor to the Prime Minister on Climate Change, in his speech, narrated the importance of sustainable tourism to meet with the challenges of global warming and climate change.
He reckoned that tourism and environment had strong linkages and close coordination could raise supplement efforts of both in raising awareness about Eco-tourism and sustainable tourism.
Sheikh Siddique, Additional Secretary, Cabinet Division, regretted that Pakistan, blessed with so many ingredients of tourism, could not tap the potential yet.
He, however, added that the policies and the current initiatives of the present government in this matter augured well for the revitalization of the tourism sector.
