The Livingstone Tourism Association – LTA has written and proposed to the labour commissioner seeking modalities on the possibility of sending non-essential employees in the tourism industry on unpaid or forced leave as the industry is battling with the impact of Covid-19.
LTA Chairman George Sikumba, told Zambian Business Times-ZBT in an exclusive interview on March 17, 2020 that the sector has been badly hit by the economic effects of Covid-19 as very few and sometimes no tourist at all are making their way to visit tourism facilities.
‘‘We have simply proposed to the labour commissioner to put most of the non-essential staff to go on forced leave. So you will more likely be seeing most of our staff going on forced leave going forward. It’s a disaster to the industry, how we will survive in the next couple of months if this pandemic persists is a big challenge,’’ said Mr Sikumba.
He added that the tourism sector as a business is badly affected by the Covid-19 especially on the accommodation side of business, saying the hotel and lodging business in terms of occupancy has drastically dropped on Covid-19.
‘‘Occupants for the Hotels has gone to as low as 10 to 20 percent, and these are big hotels, so if you are talking 10 to 20 %, there is a big problem. The people coming for big meetings are affected and the local operators who normally do transfers are not picking as many clients as visit to Livingstone have dropped, so it’s a disaster, we just need to find ways of how we can keep up the business without laying off workers.’’ he added.
He has advised employers in the tourism sector to save enough money and make plans to sustain the business during this dry season. Sikumba expressed disappointment that, unlike 2019, 2020 was a year the industry was earmarked to expand in most sectors and sell massively to the international and local tourists. He said the pandemic seem to have ravaged the these expectations.
The LTA Chairman said normally about 250,000 business travelers were coming in the country, but since the outbreak, the number has sharply dropped. He said unfortunately, countries regarded as tourists source such as United Kingdom, China, Italy, United States of America and India are the ones greatly affected with the Covid-19 pandemic.
‘‘We have a big challenge to run the tourism business in Livingstone as at now, because the vaccine and cure has not yet been found, so we are just waiting and following up any developments for the situation to normalize. Sikumba has since confirmed that the industry is taking all precautions as prescribed by the ministry of health,” he said.
