Hyderabad: The lack of a cloak room in the iconic tourist attraction, the Charminar, is forcing tourists to leave their bags with a private contractor who charges heavily.
Every day thousands of tourists from different parts of India and the world visit this historical 16th Century site, but they cannot take their bags and luggage inside for security reasons and there is no facility to keep their belongings safely outside.
The tourists are upset over the fact that such a great historical structure doesn’t have the facility to keep their belongings.
“There is no cloak room for visitors. It's distressing that the authorities are unable to provide a separate space for our luggage,” said Riya Malhotra, a tourist from Delhi.
“When we wanted to climb to the top of the Charminar, we weren’t allowed to take our bags. A person guided us to keep our belongings in a room in front of the monument or in Macca Masjid.
“The person who takes care of the bags enters our details in a register and also takes our Aadhaar card number, which sounded very odd to us! We had to keep our bags with him because we wanted to climb the monument. Moreover, he charged Rs 20 per hour and the amount doubles for the next hour,” said Ms Malhotra.
“There is no issue in paying the money to a private contractor, but the officials should make arrangements for our luggage and provide separate space in the monument for our belongings,” said Darsheel Khurana, a tourist from Mumbai.
The security officer at the monument, Ratan Kumar, says he has been instructed by the police not to allow any baggage inside the monument.
“Many visitors complain, quarrel and also try to persuade us, saying that they have small tiffin bags for their children. But we have to do our duty and we don’t allow them bring in any bags,” he said.
Mohammed Taher, who is in charge of the monument, says the space will be provided for a cloak room for luggage once ongoing renovations are over.
Inspector of police, Charminar, Chandrashekhar Reddy, confirmed that for security reasons nobody is allowed to carry bags inside the monument.
