Tourist mitras' to guide visitors, make travel easier in Karnataka
Bengaluru: For the first time the Karnataka tourism department on Thursday issued licences to tourist guides under the Tourism Facilitation Act. These were given to 111 students, who completed the Comprehensive Guide Programme under five universities - VTU, Belgavi, Mysore University, Mangalore Univeristy, Rani Channamma University, Belagavi and Bangalore University.
The four month course also included learning foreign languages. German, French and Russian language classes were taken and Chinese and Spanish will be included in future batches. Tourist guides also underwent a one-month month of training on the field.
Karnataka Tourism Director Sathyavathi said, “To train 40 students we must have spent '9 lakh. During the training we also provided them with a small stipend as most of them were from rural areas.” He said that before Tourist Facilitation Act came into force, the duties of a tourist guides were not properly defined. “But now we have been able to streamline it under the Act by providing them with this course and a licence,” he added.
So far no price chart for the tourist guides have been fixed by the tourism department, although they concede that there have been cases of exploitation of tourists by guides.
There were some concerns expressed by the guides. Lokesh from Mysore said, “We have to travel a long distance sometimes to reach our destinations, so we have been asking for bus passes, which have not been provided yet. Also, if there were a basic stipend or small salary, it would have been very helpful.”
To this, Tourism Minister R V Deshpande responded, “The guides have spoken to me about their travel problems, so I have directed my officials to see that people who travel more than 5 km are facilitated with a bus pass.”
On the issue of salary to the guides, he said, “We have given them the training and licence, now it is up to them to earn their livelihood. Nowhere in the world are guides paid a salary by the government. They have been asking for a salary. However, we will see if they need some support initially, with some basic amount which could be given.”
The ‘Tourist Guides’ will help the tourists in understanding the rich culture and history of the places they visit. M S Raghavan, chairman of Travel Agents’ Association of India, said that he will be distributing the details of these guides pan-India through all agents. R V Despande said, “We have 20 sectors like adventure, heritage etc and we will do everything possible to promote them, including making extensive use of technology. In countries outside India, the tourism industry contributes 15 to 20 per cent of the GDP but in India it is just 5 to 6 per cent.”
‘Tourist Mitras’
On the same occasion, the second and third batches of ‘Tourist Mitras’, consisting of 298 home guards, were also inducted. 84 women Tourist Mitras were part of this induction ceremony. In the second batch, a total of 174 Home Guards, out of which 66 were female home guards and in the third batch 123 home guards, out of which 18 female home guards were trained under this programme.
