Aurangabad, Dec 4:
The district collector Sunil Chavan today held a meeting with tourism professionals and assured them of trying to re-open the monuments in the district as soon as possible. He, however, underlined that the professionals associated with the industry directly or indirectly would have to take safety measures and adhere to the standard operating procedures (SOPs) regarding Covid-19 at the monuments.
Chavan said, " It is the desire of all of them to re-open the monuments. Hence the establishments like hotels, tour-operators, shopkeepers, guides, hawkers, art and handicraft artisans and other professionals in the sector should take adequate measure to ensure that the Coronavirus is not spread. If not, it would be impossible to grant the permission for re-opening of monuments. I will speak to the department of tourism (DoT) and try to re-open the monuments as early as possible."
The tourism professionals present in the meeting include president of Aurangabad Tourism Development Forum (ATDF) Jaswant Singh, Anjali Pratap, Sunil Chaudhary, Annu Kapoor, Amod Basole, Rahul Nikam, Tejander Singh Gulati, Papinderpal Singh Wayati, Sushmita Jana Roy, MTDC''s Vijay Jadhav and ASI''s Ajit Kandharkar.
Earlier, the ATDF''s chairman of Public Relations & Civil Aviation Committee, Sunit Kothari and the ATDF president Jaswant Singh had submitted several memorandums to draw the attention of the government offices concern towards the pathetic and pitiful condition of the tourism industry in the district. They had stressed that the tourism service providers, along with their staff, are facing a financial crisis. The industry has been paralysed due to closure of monuments for the past seven months. The tourists season is underway, therefore, they had stressed on the need of re-opening of the monuments on priority.