adminLiberty Dube
THE Zimbabwe Tourism Authority has not done enough to improve the tourism state-of-affairs in the Eastern Highlands and is guilty for not doing much in marketing and publicising resort centres in Manicaland, a ZTA official has said.
ZTA chief executive officer, Mr Karikoga Kaseke, said the organisation would bring major events to the Eastern Highlands in a subsequent bid to market the areas’ avalanche and scenic tourism sites as a way of drawing domestic, regional and international tourists to the eastern border city.
He said this at a Mutare tourism stakeholders meeting held at a local hotel on Monday.
The lively meeting was attended by stakeholders who include Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company, Mutare City Council, Immigration, Zinara, the Zimbabwe Republic Police as well as hoteliers from the province.
“We are guilty and convinced that we are not doing much. We need to put more effort in marketing Eastern Highlands. We should bring major events for this region and market the place vigorously as a tourism destination. We have an events unit and I think we must consider having two events per year and aim towards putting the region onto the international map,” he said.
He added that Mutare was a critical partner for tourism and should not go down on its knees because of lack of marketing.
“Mutare is a critical partner for tourism and it should go back there since it is part of Eastern Highlands. We need to do something to induce domestic tourism. Hotels should review their booking prices and make them favourable and be able to cater for locals. They should be drastic reduction of hotel prices. If a CEO like me is not in the middle class then who really is in the middle class,” added Mr Kaseke.
He urged the stakeholders to play a complimentary role in restoring Mutare’s lost status as the cleanest city in the country by efficiently providing services and subsequently lure local and international tourists to the eastern border city.
Among stakeholders who were present, Officer Commanding Crime Mutare Central, Superintendent Tsitsi Chikono, said ZRP would continue with their efforts of maintaining law and order in the city.
“Our aim is to make Mutare a peaceful place for all tourists. It should be a place free from any criminal conducts since crime repels tourists,” she said.
A ZETDC marketing officer, Mr Patient Mbarara, said in a bid to balance supply and demand, people should note that load shedding was not a punishment, but a “necessary devil which is meant to protect the system” among other causes of supply interruptions such as planned maintenance shutdowns and accidental damage to electrical infrastructure.
“We have been doing quite a number of practices to mitigate supply interruptions such as maintenance of transmission and distribution network to reduce network faults, importing power from neighbouring countries and expansion of generation assets to increase capacity by ZPC among other ways,” he said.
An official from Zimbabwe National Road Administration said under normal circumstances each and every surfaced roads should be resealed.
Manicaland has a total length of 1 533km of surfaced roads and 1 180km of gravel road.
“Due to financial constraints, this exercise has not been done as regularly as required. The resealing exercise costs around $80 000 per kilometer to do. Due to this high monetary demand, the department is only doing pothole patching, repairing edge breaks and drops if possible, drain clearing and sometimes grass cutting. For the past few years, the department has not been getting any funding from the Ministry of Finance, but getting disbursements from Zinara which are not adequate for our operations to run smoothly,” said the official.
Some roads to tourism destinations have been in appalling state, a situation hoteliers and stakeholders said was a concern.
These include Mutare-Bvumba Road, Mutare to Juliasdale as well as gravel roads in Nyanga such as the Pungwe Scenic Road and Mtarazi Falls.
Online Reporter