New minister to further Govt agenda for tourism sector

By MATTHEW VARI

Sunday, January 17, 2016 (Sunday Chronicle, PNG)

NATIONAL Planning, and former Acting Minister for Tourism, Arts and Culture, Charles Abel has hailed the appointment of current Minister for Sports Justin Tkatchenko as the new minister responsible for tourism, culture and the arts.

During a formality ceremony handing over the ministry, Mr Abel emphasized the ministry’s importance to the country and cabinet in terms of priority sector in 2016- in particular areas of agriculture and tourism.

“Minister Tkatchenko brings his energy, skills, enthusiasm to this sector which is very close to our hearts and he’s demonstrated this through his handling of the Pacific Games and his past handling he is a man of great passion for our country,” Minister Abel said.

“We have undertaken some initiatives to ensure that that dollar gets down to the people. And we know that it is very costly to get to Papua New Guinea.”

“We know that there are access issues as well, costly airfares, and when you get here the accommodation and so on.”

“It doesn’t help that you have to get through Port Moresby and finally when you get to your end destination you have sometimes issues on the ground and quality issues as well.”

He added that with the Government’s tourism zone hub concept- in major towns like Alotau, Rabaul, and Hagen city.

“We have talked about which are Gurney, Tokua, Hagen to start off with and of course we had practice flights thanks to Air Niugini where they have visa on arrival where cabinet has ensured selected areas where visa on arrival and the taxes and charges will be taken off the airfares.”

“Government record funding K50 million to support that initiative and support some of these issues to have competitive airfares into tourism zones.”