Staff Reporter
Islamabad
The National Forum for Environment and Health (NFEH) Thursday appealed to the federal, provincial governments to reopen tourist resorts all the over the country after adopting all the coronavirus-related safety precautions. In a statement issued, NFEH President Naeem Qureshi said that mass unemployment had been caused due to the closure of the tourist resorts in the country for past six months.
He said that the closure of the tourist attractions in the Gilgit Baltistan, Azad Kashmir, and other provinces had rendered jobless over 1.2 million people associated with the hospitality, recreational, and allied industries. Qureshi, who also is the convener of the FPCCI’s Standing Committee on Environment, said that the people whose livelihoods depended upon the tourism industry had been facing serious economic hardships for the past six months as many of them had no means at all to feed their families.
He said that very limited time was left before the annual tourist season of the country had come to an end with start of the winter. He said that the situation would further be worsened if no decision was taken in this regard at the earliest.
