The Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA) has begun engaging tourist sites operators and stakeholders across the country to solicit their inputs into a draft Legislative Instrument (LI) on Tourism Sites Regulation.
The LI seeks to ensure that all tourist sites in the country will keep to best acceptable standards in ensuring good sanitation, safety and security of both workers and visitors, among others.
The meeting which begun in Accra today saw participants being making a strong case for the regulations to come on stream. The Chief Executive Officer of GTA, Akwasi Agyeman in an interview with www.voyagesafriq.com said the importance of the LI document made it necessary to engage these stakeholders to collate their ideas to enrich the regulatory document.
“With every regulation that we have to bring out, as per the Act that covers tourism in the country, we need to do stakeholder consultations. This regulation is quite critical because we all know that the management, the regulation, the enhancement of our tourism sites and attractions are quite important, not just from a safety and security standpoint but also from the standpoint of proper management; that is marketing the sites and all that.
“It’s quite important that we have regulations that govern these attractions and sites. And that is why we’ve been promoting this; we’ve had consultations, we’ve done the drafting with the Attorney General’s Department and having consulted parliament, they advised that we engage all the stakeholders who these regulations are going to govern to also make inputs,” he stated.
He added that, “I believe from the discussions today, it is quite clear that few things have to be added. The Attorney General’s rep is also here to review that feedback that is coming so that we can get a document that stands the test of time. Laws are dynamic, things change with time so it is always important that as we go along we carry the people who we are seeking to regulate along the process and I believe that is what we are trying to do.”
The last consultative meeting is on the 19th of February, by which time the GTA CEO is hopeful more ideas would have been collected to help prepare the document for the final process before it goes to parliament.
“Tomorrow we are going to Kpando in the Volta region and as you know the Volta region has a lot of sites so that will be a big meeting. Then we will head to up north on the 11th to do the three northern regions. We will come back to Ashanti, do BA and Ashanti and then we head to Takoradi to do Western and Central together. So by the 19th, we should have been done with this and then we will get final draft from the AG’s office with the evidence of the consultation and then take it back to parliament where the subsidiary legislative committee will review before it’s laid in the House.” Mr. Agyeman indicated.
By: Samuel Obeng Appah
@ObengAppah
