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Tourism and Hospitality Industry Minister Engineer Walter Mzembi told Business Chronicle in an interview in Bulawayo yesterday that the inspectorate team’s visit would be a prelude to a final report to be presented in Serbia soon on the countries’ state of preparedness.
“The UNWTO general assembly technical third inspectorate team will be visiting to assess our state of preparedness to host the general assembly.
“They are expected to meet the head of the Cabinet Committee on the hosting of UNWTO, Vice President Mujuru and Government officials. After that they will move to Victoria Falls and Livingstone on the 14th to inspect the facilities,” said Eng Mzembi.
He said later this month he would be travelling to Spain to finalise the programme for the UNWTO general assembly.
Asked whether the visiting UNWTO officials would be impressed by the progress made in preparation for the summit, Minister Mzembi expressed optimism that the technical inspectorate team would be satisfied.
“They will be impressed and just three months ago I was in Mexico for the executive council meeting where the UNWTO expressed satisfaction with our state of preparedness and since then nothing negative has happened.”
Eng Mzembi said his concern was the lack of resources from the fiscus to support the tourism summit’s programmes.
“I implore the Finance Minister (Tendai Biti) and the Treasury to respond to the needs of UNWTO general assembly by releasing the funds.”
In the 2012 national budget Minister Biti set aside $2,1 million towards supporting various tourism promotional programmes.
He gave an allocation of $1 million for preparation of the co-hosting of the general assembly.
Londile Moyo
Bongani Ndlovu