Criticizing the performance of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism, and Handicrafts during the Corona, tourism activists challenged the foreign and health ministries’ policy of restricting Iranian visas and complained about the abandonment of tourism specialists.
The great migration of tourism professionals, support loans that have become major tourism debts, public sector interference in private sector affairs, the transfer of responsibility for foreign exhibitions by government order, the story of the Foreign Ministry’s resistance to the cancellation of Iran’s visa to Oman and disregard for tourism are just some criticisms that this Ministry is facing now.
Concerns were raised by tourism activists during a five-hour conversation at the clubhouse in the presence of several heads of private organizations in the Cultural Heritage Ministry department.
In this challenging conversation, the director of the Ministry and Tourism Association was had to answer for governments’ bad decisions.
Harmatullah Rafiei, chairman of the board of directors of the Air Travel and Tourism Services Association of Iran, said in an interview on “Tourism Professionals” that the total number of people directly employed in the tourism industry under the Cultural Ministry is likely to reach more than 120,000.
It turns out that half of them are now out of work. Iran has lost more than 50% of the direct and indirect labor force Cultural Heritage Ministry, which will be difficult to recover.
It’s better to let the private sector work in this industry. Private organizations must also pay attention so that they do not unite and cannot do anything.
He continued that Tourism has suffered a lot though it has been supported all over the world, here we have killed the roots of this industry because of the Cultural Heritage Ministry’s bad decisions.
Rafiei claimed: “Evidence and reports show that Cultural Heritage Ministry is more in pursuit of its business and material interests.”
Iran should not ask the Cultural Heritage Ministry to help tourism, the private sector should give the order.