Meghalaya Government is coming up with a bill to protect the fragile ecosystem of Meghalaya. Tourism Minister Paul Lyngdoh said the tourism department is looking forward to promoting High value tourism and regulating unwanted chaos created in various tourism sites.
Talking to reporters, Lyngdoh said, “More than the footfall, our emphasis now is high value tourism, which we would like to upscale the quality of visitors, rather than the quantity of visitors.”
Stating that the state is in the process of now coming up with a bill to protect the fragile ecosystem of Meghalaya, the Minister said, “To put a check to that we have come up with that idea and we are in a stage to conceive the bill and when it’s ready will be introduced in the Assembly.”
He said more than tourists’ footfall, the Government emphasis is on high value tourism like to upscale the quality of visitors then the quantity of visitors.
Asked, he said, the major focus of the bill is to protect the tourism areas from instances where there are living root bridges, monoliths, caves are the areas which are fragile and subject to damage if tourist footfall is not controlled.
“That happening everywhere for instance at Arwa cave, where at a single point of time there were about 200 people entering the cave at the same time creating a lot of chaos and noise, pollution and a lot of inconvenience where people were pushing each other and that had to be regulated,” the Minister said.
Lyngdoh was addressing the media after a consultative workshop with stakeholders in Shillong. Over hundred stakeholders participated in the event which was meant for the Khasi Jaintia Hills region.
“The aim today is to look at the pitfalls, the challenges and drawbacks in the present scheme of things. How the Government can proactively engage itself and further add value to Meghalaya as a tourism brand,” he added.