Tourism Association nods ease on Covid-19 restrictions

• That is a very important and necessary move.

• It gives an environment for tourism to begin the recovery path.

• The country had quite a number of restrictions and longer than necessary.

Livingstone Tourism Association (LTA) says government’s decision to ease Covid-19 restrictions will help keep the tourism sector afloat.

Speaking in an interview with Money FM News, Association Chairperson Hillary Kashempa said the sector was negatively affected by the Covid-19 restrictions as they were longer than necessary and implemented in a hurry.

Mr. Kashempa is hopeful that the ease on restrictions will provide an environment for the tourism industry in the country to start recovering from the Covid-19 shocks.

“That is a very important and necessary move as it gives an environment for tourism to begin the recovery path. We had quite a number of restrictions and longer than necessary and they were implemented in a hurry and the negative effects have always been on the tourism industry.

“Every time we had a bit of a window to begin some recovery, we could take a few steps back wards because of the restrictions so we are hopeful that with this further ease on restrictions, we are going to be stable in that direction and we hope that we will recover,” Mr. Kashempa said.

He thanked government for relaxing the Covid-19 restrictions that had hindered the growth of the sector.

“The move is now necessary because it’s long overdue and there was no way the industry could have been recovering with the restrictions still in effect, we are happy that the restrictions have been removed, and we are hoping to be getting some tangible results even as we work on other logistics that still hinder tourism growth but it was important that the tourism businesses were free from the restriction,” he added.

Last week, Government eased Covid-19 restrictions following the reduction in positive cases and deaths in the country.

Minister of Health Sylvia Masebo announced that there will be no restrictions on population movement, travel and business operations, adding that people travelling to Zambia will no longer need to have a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test.