Committee to promote tourism

Wednesday, 14 October 2015 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

I was very disappointed to see that our 75-year-oldMinister of Tourism John Amaratungahas appointed a so-called high-powered committee to advice on tourism.

This is exactly what happened during the Rajapaksa regime where money and power ruled everything. There were no questions of conflict of interests, transparency or even basic integrity asked then.Big time stock market investors were also administering the stock market then.

If you look at the persons in this committee it will become obvious that they aremainly hoteliers with vested interests, who will obviously lobby thoseinterests.

Tourism is not only hotels although in the eye of the Minister that is all he sees in tourism. No other stakeholders are represented in this committee except for a few officials who will be simply over whelmed by big money and big talk.

Several of this committee are recent investors in tourism like Merrill Fernando of tea fame who is a recent investor in boutique hotels. Others like Shiromal Cooray and Sanjay Gardiner merely inheritedtheir hotels, hardly the kind of experts we are looking for.

It is obvious that Dinesh Weerakkody the son-in-law of Minister Amaratunga is a big player in the Ministry of Tourism today. Under the Rajapaksa regime his qualifications in human resource management enabled him to become the Chairman of Commercial Bank with the full support of that regime. Before that under Ranil Wickremesinghe, he was Chairman of ETF. He is also a Director of the Access Group of Sumal Perera. It must be noted that presently Dinesh Weerakkody is a Director of the Galle Face Group of which Sanjay Gardiner is Chairman.

It is sad to see the same culture continuing while paying lip service to good governance.

Feroze Khan