THE government is working on a plan in which the civil service will get holidays as part of their condition of service in a bid to grow domestic tourism.
NDAMU SANDU
Tourism and Hospitality Industry minister Walter Mzembi said yesterday that the package was now with the Public Service Commission.
Mzembi said his ministry has a dream of seeing “every civil servant take one holiday per year.
‘We have products that can anchor that [plan]. National Parks have 700 beds that are empty. Rather than let those assets lie idle, I envisage collaboration between Tourism and Environment, Water and Climate to utilise that dead capacity,” Mzembi said. “We have designed it. We have referred it to the employers to make it a condition of service.”
Until last week, the civil service enjoyed fixed pay dates at a time other sectors of the economy have been struggling to pay salaries.
Mzembi said his ministry seeks to boost tourism inflows and avoid leakages in the form of locals going to other countries. He said the ministry was working on a paper on potential tourism earnings for the country that would make the sector the first to sponsor itself. The work would result in the sector earning $5 billion per annum by 2020. Currently the tourism industry is earning $1 billion.
Mzembi said the sector has potential to earn 30% of South Africa’s annual tourism revenue of $12 billion.
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Such growth is pre-conditioned on Zimbabwe opening up the skies to attract more airlines. Currently, 16 airlines are flying into the country from a peak of 48 in 1999. He said Zimbabwe should be back to its air hub status following the upgrading works at Harare, Bulawayo and Victoria Falls airports.
“Is that impossible? We have upgraded airports, what is missing are the passengers. We must walk the practical step in implementing the open-skies policy,” he said.
Mzembi said the growth in tourism would be premised on a flexible visa regime for tourists from Brazil, Russia, India and China. Currently, these countries are in category ‘C’ which means that they have to apply for visas in source markets. He envisaged a situation where those nationals should have visas on arrival or no visa at all to grow the tourism revenue.
Last year, China had 100 million outbound travellers spending $140 billion. Of those travellers Zimbabwe got a paltry 3 800. “These two policy measures [open skies policy and flexible visa regimes] do not require money,” Mzembi said.
