Facing the acute Tourism Human Resources crunch at Jharkhand, State Tourism department officers guided the Birla Institute of Technology (BIT), lalpur administration to launch a two years Masters of Tourism Management (MTM) on Friday. The course is first of its kind in whole Jharkhand and Bihar.
According to State Tourism Principal Secretary Sajal Chakraborty, the conventional tourism of the State is at a low position. There is no inbound tourism. Sajal said, “All the posts for District Tourism Officers, Assistant Tourism Officers and Tourism Reception people are vacant at Jharkhand. In fact, there are only one Managing Director, one General Manager, two staffs and six peons at Jharkhand State Tourism Development Corporation.”
“We have decided to absorb people on contractual basis as it will take around one to two years for recruiting staffs through Jharkhand Public Service Commission (JPSC). I will meet Chief Secretary RS Sharma in a month with this request,” added Chakraborty.
As far as this course is concerned, it would help in self-employment training opportunities in the tourism perspective. MTM funded by the State Tourism department provides the foundation in basic tourism management courses with wide range of electives in tourism sector. “Chakraborty has assured us to provide the faculty and student placement for this course,” said a BIT, lalpur faculty.
State Tourism Department Director Siddhartha Tripathi felt tourist accommodation, transportation and human resources as Jharkhand’s immediate tourism needs. Speaking on the cooperation for tourism upliftment from the Maoist’s side, Sajal said, “Maoists do not want capitalist set up but are ready to accept 100 per cent tourism development.”
Both Sajal and Tripathi expressed difficulties on proper work ambience due to frequent replacement of officers in every State Government department. “This land can be the anthropological capital of our country as per United Nations documents. We ought to market our State’s tourism,” Tripathi said. It is to be noted, the Tourism department is trying to establish fooding and toilet facilities in around 54 tourist spots across the State. BIT Vice-Chancellor PK Barhai stressed on the need to strengthen the Medical Tourism here as Jharkhand is known to be the ‘Jerusalem of the East’. He said, “Once medical tourism is done at Jharkhand, technical development will also take place.”