Inclusive approach necessary to draft new Tourism Act

WITH the Cabinet having already granted approval to draft a new Tourism Act, the Government is now poised to revise the prevailing Tourism Act of 2005.

- 

Certain sections of the tourism industry have expressed doubts about the move as some within the private sector speculate that the new piece of legislation would create cumbersome and unwarranted bureaucracy. However, policymakers of the Government had assured the process of legislation would involve extensive engagement with multiple stakeholders of the industry from the private sector.

Although the prevailing Act was enacted in 2005, it came into implementation only in 2007. It was alleged that the then Tourism Minister Anura Bandaranaike refrained from issuing the gazette notification pertaining to the Act. Some accused the late politician of deliberately delaying the implementation of the legislation due to pressures from certain sections of the hitherto Ceylon Tourist Board (which was dissolved when the existing act replaced the Ceylon Tourist Board Act No. 10 of 1966). Nevertheless, Bandaranaike’s successor Milinda Moragoda issued the gazette in 2007. Operational challenges of creating four separate institutions earmarked by the 2005 Act would have contributed towards the delay too. The prominence given to the private sector by the current law was resisted by certain influential sections associated with the ruling political administration at that time.