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-The hotel, catering, tourism and
allied workers union of Zambia (HCTAWUZ) has cried foul over the preparations to host the forth-coming United Nations World Tourism Organisation conference in Livingstone.
The union says that there is need to see tangible preparations in the tourist city as the country draws close to co-hosting the event with Zimbabwe in Victoria Falls town in August this year.
HCTAWUZ Secretary General Michelo Chizyuka is worried that the bed capacity in
Livingstone remains the same and has not increased for a long
period of time.
He said this in an interview with ZANIS in Livingstone yesterday.
Mr Chizyuka wondered where the money for the preparations had gone and what it
has been used for as works on the ground cannot be seen with only a
few months to go before the hosting of the global event.
“We want to see tangible preparations, I have been away but each time
I come back I don’t see the impact of the preparations being talked
about and the roads are still in a bad state as though the town is not
preparing for the UNWTO general assembly,” he said.
He has bemoaned the lack of the union involvement in the preparations
saying it should have at least 50 per cent involvement in
the preparations of the conference.
Mr Chizyuka said that the union feels sidelined by both national and local
organising committees.
“The union is supposed to be part of this issue, 50 percent is our
take in the preparations, we are able to pass on the basics that the
tourists expect,” he said.
He claimed that the media reports were misleading the people as they
were portraying that Livingstone is fully prepared to host
the prestigious UNWTO when in fact not.
He said that the biggest problem was the lack of coordination for the
preparations noting that the UNWTO should have been the stepping stone
for the development of tourism for Livingstone.
“The only thing we have seen is that permanent secretaries have been touring and their
tours have had no results or impact,” he said.
