CHITRAL, Aug 31: All stakeholders of tourism industry, including hotel owners, tour operators and porters, have demanded of the tourism ministry to immediately come up with a comprehensive plan for restoration of the tourism infrastructure in the district and a relief package for them.

They said that besides causing extensive damage to the tourism infrastructure the recent floods had also rendered hundreds of people related to the tourism industry jobless.

Talking to Dawn here on Tuesday, a number of tour operators and hotel owners, including Razzaq Hayat, Dawood Ahmed and Sardar Hussain, said that floods had badly damaged the tourism industry in Chitral, resulting in millions of rupees losses to people associated with this sector. They said that this year large groups of tourists were coming to the area after improvement in law and order situation and a record number of tourists had thronged the area to witness Kalash festival ' chilim jusht' and Shandur polo festival.

The tour operators said that a number of the groups of foreigners were also scheduled to visit the area and had planned to arrive here by end of July.

However, they said that all tourists intending to visit Chitral cancelled their reservations, while those stranded in the area following floods left the district on first available chance. The most popular tourist resort of Bamburate valley was the worst affected where around a dozen hotels, including the government-owned PTDC hotel, were damaged by flood.

All the three Kalash valleys remained cut off from rest of the district for over three weeks, as floods also washed away roads and suspension bridges. The road to another picnic spot Garam Chashma is still closed to traffic like other similar tourist destinations across the district.

The hotel owners said that due to no tourists most of the hotels had been closed down for the season. “Our hotels would remain open till November, as foreign tourists would wait for Kalash festival in the autumn,” said a dejected hotel owner in Bamburate valley.