‘Bumper tourism season delights stakeholders, opens employment avenues’
The tourist footfall in Kashmir is likely to cross one million mark, according to officials, opening new employment opportunities for the locals.
According to officials, the record tourist arrivals have created hundreds of jobs for locals involved in the tourism industry who were rendered jobless due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“At present more than nine lakh tourists have visited Kashmir since January 1 2022 and this figure is likely to cross one million mark by the end of this month,” a senior official in J&K’s tourism department told Brighter Kashmir.
Officials said the Union Territory administration has taken several steps to ensure that air traffic to Jammu and Srinagar airports grows unhindered in the future so that trade and tourism flourishes in the union territory.
On Tuesday, deputy commissioner’s office in south Kashmir’s Anantnag district said in a tweet: “Kashmir is witnessing a ‘golden period of tourism’ as 80 lakh tourists have visited the UT in the past few months alone, breaking all the records of the past 20 years.”
However, official sources said the figure was not true.
The J&K government had organised a series of programs and road shows in different states of the country to attract tourists which seem to be paying the dividends.
These days, nearly all the hotels, guesthouses and houseboats in Kashmir are running full to capacity with a huge influx of tourists coming from Maharashtra and Gujarat.
“This is for the first time that such a huge number of tourists are visiting Yusmarg. I can’t recall the last time when we witnessed so many tourists here. We are all happy,” said Mohammad Shaban, an employee of J&K Tourism Development Corporation.
The number of tourists have grown despite a spate of targeted killings in Kashmir with at least 21 civilians gunned down by terrorists with the members of minority Kashmiri Pandit community and migrant workers increasingly getting targeted.
The Pandit community has been staging protests since May 12 when Rahul Bhat, a government clerk, was shot dead at his office in Chadoora area of Budgam district. The members of the community have been demanding that they should be relocated to Jammu.
Courtesy : Brighter Kashmir