THIS is with reference to the good diction and substantive content of the subject story by Hajrah Mumtaz on (Nov 23).

Our industry’s internally-added problem is the summary deletion of the concurrent list by the authors of the 18th Amendment. Yes, the provinces are exclusively responsible for promoting tourism, with the result that in the last three years, visitors to major international events like the ITB in Berlin saw one province or the other whose signage mentioned the province but not its country. Tourism-related world bodies and industry stakeholders worldwide recognise, count and address countries, not provinces; thus, the provinces’ exhibitions ended up being neither here nor there.

Tourism grows well if promoted from grassroots management and devolution per se is not wrong, but to remove the fiat of national coordination, without which Pakistan tourism can have neither the national identity, nor uniform national standards of services for the world tourism industry to recognise.

As for the provinces responding to devolution, while we have the Khyber-Pakhtun government racing to take over ‘PTDC properties’ in its territory, we have the Sindh government refusing to receive PTDC-built facility at its prime seaside.

As for the PTDC, your staffer is very right in saying “Even the PTDC is no more. The 18th Amendment sounded its death knell.” That it is kept breathing is one of the several examples of how our democratic governments disregard law while pursuing their party’s/leader’s agenda.

The minister has taken the plea that the PTDC is a private limited company. But it is owned by the federal government which has been divested of any authority over the very subject of tourism and should have been dissolved by now.

The urgent need is for parliament to adopt yet another amendment to re-introduce the concurrent list, albeit modified/reduced according to the three years’ experience. Sectors like tourism cannot brook isolation from the international forums of the world tourism industry which has seen much change in the last few years. For one thing, there is a new trade body of the tourism industry/trades in the Indian Ocean Rim and Pakistan was not even visible for it to be invited by the founders.

Once the subject of tourism is restored to concurrent responsibility of the federal government, it should create the Pakistan Tourism Authority as documented in the 7th Five-Year Plan.

Syed I. R. Kazimi

Karachi

Published in Dawn, December 2nd, 2015