Inject direct funding to tourism industry – MP

SANDAKAN: Member of Parliament for Sandakan, Vivian Wong said the Ministry of Tourism and Culture should inject direct funding to help the tourism industry survive this Covid-19 crisis before talking about any form of recovery.

Vivian said this in response to the written reply in the Dewan Rakyat by Tourism and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Hajah Nancy Shukri, on how the ministry intended to utilise unused fund for Visit Malaysia 2020 campaign promotion to help the industry, especially tourism stakeholders in Sabah.

In her reply, the minister stated that other than the wage subsidy programme (Program Subsidi Upah) and SME grant that was introduced to all businesses under the various stimulus packages, the ministry has also introduced other assistance schemes such as tourism fee exemption till 31 Dec 2020, tour operator licence renewal exemption, extension of tour bus permit to 15 years for Sabah and Sarawak operators, 40 percent discount for summons received, as well as various online and offline promotion campaign for domestic tourism.

Although Vivian appreciates the various measures put in place by the ministry, especially the newly announced additional RM1,000 for each tour bus driver in Sabah, she believes the key is to help them to survive the current storm financially so that they can still stand a chance to recover later.

“Without any doubt, our tourism industry is the worst hit during this pandemic. Many organisations have predicted that it will take the tourism industry two to three years to recover. So if our tourism players could not survive during this period, any recovery plan will be meaningless as most would have left the industry by the end of this period.

“Our state border may have been reopened, the government may have been actively promoting domestic tourism, but due to the extra hassles and additional costs associated with pre-departure testing requirement, domestic tourism for Sabah will not benefit substantially as we rely fully on air travel for our tourism sector," she said.

Hence, she fully agreed with DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng's suggestion that the RM94 million development budget for the Ministry of Tourism and Culture be channelled instead as a direct fund injection to help the tourism stakeholders to survive financially.

"This could be in a form of further wage subsidy and grant," she said.

She added that any new tourism development projects at the moment will be redundant if the sector closes shop for good.